WordPress Settings and Customizing

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WordPress offers different settings for website functions

Updated: September 5, 2023
By: RSH Web Editorial Staff

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Exploring the World of your WordPress Website Settings

From the WordPress Dashboard, If we click on the Settings menu, you will see a sub-menu with options for various settings.

General
Writing
Reading
Discussion
Media
Permalinks

Backup with Plugins

WordPress General Settings

If you expand the WordPress settings menu. The first thing you will see under General Settings is your "Site Title" and "Tagline". Make sure these titles match your website. By default, WordPress includes “just another WordPress site” as your site’s tagline. You will want to update this tagline to be descriptive of your site, because the "Site Tagline" also shows up in the Google search results.

The WordPress Address (URL)

For your Website address or URL, you can change the URL address if you want your Website to be different from the directory where you installed WordPress. In most cases, it is best to leave these two URLs as the default ones.

Admin Email Address

This is used for Administration purposes, such as new user notification. To change the WordPress website email address, go to Settings » General and change the ‘Email Address option.

Membership Settings

With WordPress, you can allow anyone to register with your website. This is a good feature, especially if you are running a membership site. The New User Default Role is by default set to subscriber. You will normally leave this setting as is, since you do not want to grant administration privileges to anyone that registers.

Timezone

Here you will see lists to be able to select the city in the same timezone as you, and you can then select your preferred date format. Remember, this date format will also be visible on blog posts. If you have any questions about this format, click on the link under this section.

Time Format and Week Starts On

Once you’ve updated or change these settings, click Save changes.

WordPress Writing Settings

From the left menu, open the "Writing Settings" page. All the setting on this page apply to writing and publishing content for your site.

The top section controls the editor within the WordPress Dashboard, while the rest control external publishing methods.

In the first section, you’ll see options for formatting and default categories and format of posts.

The next section is the "Press This bookmarklet". This is a bookmarklet that makes it easy to blog about things you find on the web. To use it, just drag the "Press This link" on your screen to your bookmarks bar in your browser. Once it’s in your toolbar, just click on it while you’re on another website to open a popup window for sharing content.

WordPress "Post via Email" settings allow you to email to your site with post content. To use this, you will need to set up a secret e-mail account with a POP3 access, and any mail received at this address will be posted. For this reason, it’s a good idea to keep this address secret.

The last section is for update services. When you publish a new post, WordPress will automatically notify the update services listed here. For more information, check out the Update Services link in this section.

WordPress Reading Settings

This screen contains the settings that affect the display of your content. Here you choose what is displayed on the front page of your site, either your latest posts or a fixed/static page. Once we have created a few pages, these pages will be listed here as options for what’s shown on your front page and for where to display your posts. The next section is where you can control the display of your content in RSS feeds, including the maximum numbers of posts to display and whether to show full text or a summary.

Search Engine Visibility

If you do not want Search Engines to show your Website, check the box next to "Discourage Search Engines from indexing this site". This can be helpful if you are still developing your website, and you are not ready for it to be indexed by search engines yet.

WordPress Discussion Settings

This will provide a lot of options for the management of comments and controlling links to your posts and pages. The first section is for default article settings. The first setting deals with links you make to other blogs. The second deals with ping backs and track backs, or links back to your blog. The third setting in the default article settings that allow people to post comments on new articles. If you’d rather not allow people to comment on your posts, uncheck this box.

In Other comment settings, you can chose the guidelines for how people post comments and how their comments are handled.

Email Me Whenever

In this section, you can choose to be emailed when someone posts a comment or when a comment is helped in moderation.

Before a Comment Appears section

This deals with how comments are published. Here you can decide if an administrator must always approve comments or if to publish automatically if the comment author had previously posted a comment.

Comment Moderation area

Here, you can customize how a comment is held based on the number of links. In this box, you can also add words, names, URLs, emails or even IPs to filter comments into the moderation queue. Both this section and the "Comment Blacklist" section are great for helping to defend your blog against spam comments.

Avatar Section

An avatar is a profile image you can have assigned to your email address when you comment on avatar enabled Websites. You can enable the display of avatars for people who comment on your site, filter by their rating, or choose a default avatar for people that don’t already have a custom one of their own. If you don’t already have an avatar, visit gravatar.com to grab your own.

WordPress Media Settings

The Media Settings page allows you to set maximum sizes for images inserted into the body of a post. These settings are good if you want images to be the same size or if you want to apply default settings for medium and large image sizes.

Uploading Files Option

This allows you to select whether your uploads are organized into month and or a year based folder.

WordPress Permalinks

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to individual pages and blog posts, as well as category and tag archives. Basically, a permalink is the web address used to link to your content that is permanent and never changes. The Permalink Settings screen allows you to choose your default permalink structure. You can choose from common settings or create custom URL structures. By default, WordPress uses links or "URLs" which use question marks and numbers in them. You may want to change your permalinks to a different structure to help improve the looks, usability, and forward compatibility. If you’d like more information on setting up your permalinks, click the Help tab at the top of the screen. You will see an overview of common settings and structures to help select your permalink structure.

Popular Plugins for WordPress

Import / Export Customizer Settings

Astra theme customizer offers several settings for header/footer layout, sidebar and blog designs, colors, backgrounds, typography and much more. You need to tweak the number of settings to make your site look flawless.

Emoji Settings

Quickly enable or disable emojis conversion with an option. When you disable the option, Emoji Settings stops the conversion of ASCII smilies like :) and :D to images on any WordPress installation. This plugin also prevents changing real emojis to Twemoji (Twitter) images.

Import Settings into WordPress SEO by Yoast

The Yoast WordPress SEO Add-On for WP All Import makes it easy to bulk import your SEO setting to the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin in less than 10 minutes.

XTRA Settings

XTRA adds 40+ hidden settings, tweaks and options to tailor your wordpress website in a clean format and super-light weight. The plugin uses WP actions, filters, the .htaccess file and the wp-config.php file for setting options.

Import Settings into WordPress SEO Plugin

The Rank Math Add-On for WP All Import makes it easy to bulk import your SEO setting to the WordPress SEO Plugin – Rank Math plugin in less than 10 minutes.

Persistent block editor settings

Tired of losing your block editor settings when you change devices, or your local browsing data is cleared? Then this is the plugin for you!

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