How to Configure Your Settings in WordPress
WordPress has evolved into much more than a blog platform; it’s a powerful and sophisticated content management system (CMS) that can serve as the foundation for nearly any type of website. That flexibility, however, does not lend itself to simplicity. In order to get the most out of WordPress, the web developer needs to custom tailor it and fine-tune it. That requires diving into the WordPress settings and other configuration aspects, and that can seem like a daunting task to some, especially WordPress newbies. Fortunately, it’s not nearly as complex as it may seem.
How to Configure Your Settings in WordPress
• This video tutorial assumes you’ve already logged into your WordPress account.
• On the left-hand side of the control panel, locate the navigation links and click ‘Settings.’
• The first settings page is ‘General Settings,’ which includes title, tagline, URL and so forth.
• Other general settings include date format, time format and the start day for the week.
• This section also hosts the registration options, which is an important aspect of controlling user interaction.
• If you’ve made changes here, click the ‘Save Changes’ button prior to navigating away from this page.
• If the settings saved properly, an in-page notification will read, ‘Settings saved.’
• In the left-hand column, beneath the Settings tab, there are other categories beneath General:
• Click ‘Writing’ to go to the post writing settings.
• This page hosts post-related settings, such as lines per post and automatic emoticon conversion.
• Click ‘Reading’ to go to the post reading settings.
• This page hosts post-related settings for presentation, such as font and number of posts per page.
• Click ‘Discussion’ to go to the discussion settings.
• This page hosts comment-related settings. Here you can dictate comment presentation.
• You can also control who can post, how you’re notified and whether comments require authorization to be visible.
• Click ‘Media’ to go to the media settings.
• This page hosts media-related settings, such as image sizes, file upload control and auto-embedding.
• Click ‘Privacy’ to go to the site privacy settings.
• This page hosts settings that dictate how WordPress exposes the site to the Internet.
• You can create a private site, or a site that is not visible to search engines like Bing and Google.
• Click ‘Permalinks’ to go to the permalinks settings.
• This page hosts settings that dictate how WordPress exposes URLs.
• By default, URLs are long and complex, and with these settings, you can shorten and simplify them.
• After making changes on any of these pages, click the ‘Save Changes’ button and wait for success confirmation.
More about WordPress
WordPress allow developers to create websites ranging from simple blogs to sophisticated multi-author sites with a lot of user interaction. The settings and other configuration options are the key to that power, and by mastering them; you’ll be able to create WordPress-powered sites that are far beyond the generic WordPress sites that are so common.
