Ah, the settings tab. There is so much to discuss here. There are 7 subsections to adjust: general, writing, reading, discussion, media, permalinks, and sharing. Let’s get started.
General.
Pretty easy. Fill out any blank information and chose your time zone.
Writing.
Formatting: do you want to see 🙂 on your blog or : ) on your blog? Yes, some decisions in life can be silly and fun. Here you can also choose a default post category and default format. I don’t recommend posting via email.
Reading.
The first option is to set your front page for your website. Do you want yourblog.com to show your current posts, or do you want it to be a static landing page? Our front page is a static page.
Next, how many posts do you want to show on a page before you have the reader click the older posts button?
Do you want the blog page to show the full posts or just a summary with a “read more” or “continue” button for them to open up and read the full article?
The last section is Search Engine Visibility. If you don’t want your blog to show up on search engines, click it. If you do want to be found, don’t click the box and submit your own blog to search engines.
Discussion.
This is where you can adjust your comment settings.
In the first section, do you want WordPress to notify other blogs when you link to their page? For example, if you have this checked, WordPress will “ping” me when you post “read this awesome tour of WordPress by Dreamy Ambitions” and include a link to this page. Along the same lines, if I linked to you, do you want to be notified? I had to disable this section on our blog (guess I won’t be getting that ping from you) because I link to my own posts all the time and I was getting annoyed at the notifications telling me that I linked to myself. And finally, do you want others to comment on your articles? Most likely, you will want to click yes on this. Creating a social community is crucial for a successful blog these days!
Next, adjust the other comment settings. How strict do you want to be about who comments? Next, you can choose how long you want to leave a post open for comments. Followed by how many comments do you want to show on a page? Last, do you want the newest or the oldest comment on top?
After that, decide whether you want to be emailed each time you receive a comment. When you’re a new blogger, it is very exciting to get an email saying someone commented! “WAHOO!!!! A COMMENT! SOMEONE COMMENTED!” When you are getting 500 comments + a day, you may not want to get an email for each one and prefer to log in and read them.
Next to before a comment appears you can choose to have the comment show up on your blog post after you review it or if the author has left a comment on your blog before.
In comment moderation, WordPress lets you moderate the comments by what is inside them. You can choose to hold a comment for moderation or to block it entirely. If you’re worried about spam links, hold a comment for moderation when it includes a link. Want to block comments from a frequent, annoying commenter? Put their IP in the Comment Black list. Don’t want spam comments about inappropriate products? Me neither; if you are having a problem with this, include those terms in the Blacklist.
Avatars are images that include a picture besides your name. Avatars are fun and help us connect with each other. I recommend creating one for yourself, you will learn how to in this How to Start a Blog series. After deciding whether you want your comment section to show avatars, you can also adjust your settings on what kind of avatars you will allow on your blog. I like playing it safe and only approve avatars up to PG rating. You can also decide how you want users’ avatars to look when they don’t have their own.
Phew. That was a lot of adjusting. But, you’re done with the comment section. For now. You may need to adjust your settings to keep up with the types of comments you are receiving.
Media
This section allows you to adjust the default image sizes and how you want your files organized.
Permalinks
Your domain name is yourblog.com, the URL is http://yourblog.com and the permalink is the address to a particular post at that URL: http://yourblog.com/sample-post. The default format is a number. If you want your permalink to be more customized, choose another format.
You have now adjusted all the basic settings within WordPress. Let’s move on to the more exciting details now!
What’s Next? Install a WordPress Theme
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I don’t know much I can thank you! I have been wanting to start a blog for awhile now, and I’m finally on the way! WITH YOUR HELP. No joke, I’m following your directions word for word and click for click 🙂
It’s very helpful!
I am so glad you’re on your way with your blog. Let me know if there is more I can help you with, it’s looking great so far. Keep it up!