Before you do anything else, you now need to learn about WordPress settings. Using the username and password that you created during the installation process, sign into WordPress:
Once signed in, you will see what is referred to as the Dashboard. Don’t forget this word, it’s referred to a lot whenever working with WordPress. Look down the left hand column and find the link titled Settings. You will notice that by clicking on this link, it opens up a list of things that you can modify settings for: General, Writing, Reading and so forth.
Permalink Settings
The first setting that I would like to address is the Permalink setting. This will determine what the URL’s to your posts will look like.
The debate among WordPress users about how to set the permalinks will probably go on forever. People like to have ‘pretty permalinks’, and may often go against the advice of what WordPress.org recommends.
Since this tutorial is meant to be simple and to the point, I’ll recommend to you setting the permalinks to either one of the following, choosing the Custom Structure option:
/%monthnum%/%postname%/
OR
/%year%/%postname%/
If you would like to read more about permalink structure, I recommend reading an article written by Otto on WordPress, and the documentation provided by WordPress.org.
Other WordPress Settings
The other settings for WordPress are fairly self explanatory and will be of your personal preference. I don’t feel I need to walk you through them in detail. Just go through each one – General, Reading, Writing, etc. and set each one as you please. I will offer up just some basic advice:
General Settings
- Don’t change your URL’s
Writing Settings
- Size of Post Box is the text editor for your posts and pages. You can change the vertical size.
- The Default Post Category will determine what category new posts will be put into by default. As mentioned in my Overview of WordPress, you can set up unlimited, nested categories for posts. If you plan on posting in one category more than another, you can save time by choosing that category to be your Default Post Category.
Reading Settings
- Don’t change the encoding for pages and feeds.
Privacy Settings
- Until you’re ready to launch your website for the world to see, set the privacy settings to block search engines. WordPress is nice enough to remind you to change this later on by putting a message at the top of your dashboard telling you that search engines are blocked.
