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Hello, I’m MaAnna with BlogAid and in this video, I’ll show you how to configure your
WordPress site settings including basic site functions, and settings that affect your SEO.
I’m on the Dashboard page of a training site I use to make these videos and I’m
using the default Twenty Twelve theme. All of the settings we’ll cover are standard
to WordPress, but you may have additional ones, depending on the theme you are using.
To access your site Settings, go to the bottom of the sidebar on the left and hover over
the Settings link.
You’ll see a flyout menu with all of your Settings sub-links.
To get to the General settings, you can simply click the main Settings link, or the General
sub-link.
There are several very important settings on this page and we’ll cover all of them.
The first two are the title and tagline of your site. These are important for your SEO,
so be sure to have them filled in correctly. However, different themes handle these elements
in various ways. Some automatically place the information in these two fields in your
header as text. That can be a good thing, as it will be the first text that search engines
index. However, if you’re using a header graphic, you certainly don’t want this text
to be shown over it. So, experiment and see how it appears on your site. You’ll also
want to check how your site appears to search engines to ensure that this info is being
passed along by your theme. If not, you’ll need to get an SEO plugin or set up the SEO
section of your premium theme.
The next two fields deal with your site address or URL. Now, this can also be important for
your SEO, because it is already set to what is known as your canonical URL. You can modify
it to not include the www part. But keep in mind that there are probably files from your
host provider that automatically redirect folks to your home page no matter whether
they type in the www or not. So, unless you have specific SEO reasons to change this,
you probably want to leave this as it is.
The next field is for the email address you wish to have WordPress use to send you site
notifications. Now, this is not the same thing as the email addresses you can setup through
your contact form. This is simply for WordPress to send you notices that something has happened
on your site, such as someone leaving a comment on one of your blog posts. And, it doesn’t
have to be the same email address you have in your User Profile. You want that one to
be the same email address that you use for your Gravatar account. For more on that, be
sure to go to the BlogAid Video Library to see the video tutorial on all of the important
information you want to include in your User Profile.
The next setting is your Timezone, and this is important for scheduling posts or pages
to publish at a later date. Choose your timezone from the drop-down. I’m in the Central Time
zone, which is UTC – 6.
Be sure to watch the video tutorial on creating a blog post to learn how to schedule your
posts for future publication.
The last three settings are for the date and time format and when the week begins. These
are important if your theme shows the date and time of publication.
I’ve already got a tab open with one of my blog posts to show you where this information
appears on your site.
It’s right here below the post title.
Let’s return to the Settings page.
When you’re finished making all of your modifications, click the Save Changes button.
You’ll need to do this on every page where you make changes.
Next we’re going to go to the Settings for Writing.
WordPress 3.5 made changes to what settings are available. You can elect to convert your
typed emoticons to graphics. And, you can elect to have WordPress correct any invalid
coding. I wouldn’t do that one if you are using a better text editor plugin, like TinyMCE
Advanced. Be sure to see the video tutorial on that because it is far superior to the
default editor that comes with WordPress.
The next setting is for the Default Post Category. You will have to create at least one other
category for there to be anything available in this drop-down besides Uncategorized. As
you can see, I’ve created one titled WordPress. You can create new categories as you create
posts, or you can create them via the Categories sub-link under Posts. Be sure to watch the
video tutorial on Categories for more info on this because they are one of the most powerful
features of WordPress.
The next setting is for the Default Post Format and it’s a good idea to leave this at Standard.
The options you see here will depend entirely on your theme.
The last drop-down choice here is for the Default Link Category. This feature is actually
going to go away in later versions of WordPress because hardly anyone every uses it. So, just
leave it at the default.
A parameter that used to be here, was for setting the default size of the post box of
your text editor. I’m sorry to see that it is no longer available. So, to change the
size of the content area of your text editor, you’ll need to drag it bigger. See the video
tutorial on working with the text editor for more on that.
Press This is a little app that helps you copy snippets from other sites to post on
your site. However, some folks get a Not Found page error when they use it. So, my recommendation
is to find other ways to create bookmarklets if you need them.
You can post to your blog via email, which is handy if you want to post from a mobile
device such as your phone. Keep in mind that you will have little to no formatting options,
so keep your post short and simple. There are far better mobile apps for this, so I
suggest you use those instead of this feature.
And the last parameter is very important. WordPress comes preloaded with the Ping-O-Matic
pinging feature. What that does is tell search engines like Google that you have new pages
or posts ready to be indexed. It works very well, but if you have special services you
also want to ping, like other blog directories, you can add them here too. There are several
big lists online for pinging services, but even the WordPress Codec has whittled them
down to three. Honestly, the Ping-O-Matic database has grown so much that it is the
only one that I use.
Now we’re going to have a look at the Reading tab.
By default, WordPress sets a Post page as the Home page of your site. For most folks
with simple themes, that will be their blog page. But, premium themes that have home pages
built entirely of widget ready areas that also use a Posts page for the home page. If
you want to use a static page as your home page, be sure to watch the video tutorial
on how to select another static page as your Home page and it will walk you through the
settings here.
The next setting allows you to select how many blog posts to show on your blog page.
And this is very important and can radically impact how long viewers stay on your site.
You might also want to use this in conjunction with the More Tag for abbreviating the length
of your posts and inserting a Read More link that folks can click to see the full post.
If you’re using a premium theme, it’s very likely that you’ll have the option
to show an excerpt or cut the content at a certain character limit. Be sure to watch
the video tutorial on using the Standard Text Editor, which discusses the More Tag and why
it’s important.
The next three settings deal with the RSS feed from your site. Setting it to only send
a summary has become popular to avoid getting your content scraped by other sites. However,
that is usually very inconvenient for your feed subscribers. So, you may want to set
it to Full and then change to only a Summary later if you find that your content is being
scraped that way.
WordPress 3.5 has moved the Search Engine Visibility setting to this page. It used to
have its own sub-link called Privacy. You’ll want to leave this unchecked so that Google
and other search engines can find and index your site.
Now we’re moving to the Discussion settings.
These settings primarily affect how your comments on blog posts work.
The first few settings have to do with notifications of when you link to other sites or when they
link to your posts and pages, and then whether comments are turned on by default. All of
these can be overridden on a per post or per page basis.
You may want to check the first one, so that other site owners know when you are linking
to them.
However, you may want to uncheck receiving pingbacks and trackbacks to your site. This
has become attractive to spammers, and has now become attractive to hackers as well.
As of the date this video is being made, the folks behind the WordPress code are in the
process of fixing this security hole. So, you may just want to turn off this setting.
The next setting turns on the ability for folks to leave comments on your posts and
pages. You can override this setting on a per post or page basis. It’s probably easier
to turn this on here, then simply uncheck that option on your pages because you make
less of those. Now, if you have a premium theme, it may have its own settings for this
too. So, make sure they are in concert with one another.
Be sure to watch the video tutorials on creating pages and posts for more on setting these
on a per post or page basis.
The next group of settings determines what folks have to fill in to leave a comment,
whether you want to close comments after a certain time, and the look of threads in your
comments.
I’ve found that the posts that get spammed the most are really old ones. So, I set comments
to close after a couple of months. But then, the content on BlogAid is not evergreen. So,
if yours is, you may want to not close comments.
You may need to modify these settings as your site gets more popular and you start getting
a lot of comments on your posts. Also, there are several different types of comment plugins
that can override these settings. So, the settings on this page really only work for
the default comment functions that came pre-loaded with WordPress. And, be sure to see the bonus
video tutorial on setting up threaded comments.
Remember in the General settings when I talked about WordPress emailing you notifications?
Well, this is where you set what it will email you, including when someone leaves a comment
on one of your posts or pages. If you don’t login to your site every day and see notifications
of comments there, this could be a great way to let you know that someone is communicating
with you and that will give you a chance to reply to them in a timely manner.
The next couple of sections deal with comment moderation settings. If this second option
is checked, you can choose to have a look at comments and then either approve or delete
them before they appear on the site. While this allows you to have strict control over
what appears on your site, it also causes a significant delay in the conversation. And,
most spam plugins like Akismet will filter bad comments and keep them from appearing
on your site. So, most site owners no longer moderate comments.
The next section helps you filter comments based on what they contain. So, if someone
is putting a bunch of links in their comments, you can have it held for moderation and check
to see if it is appropriate before it appears on your site.
The next section allows you to blacklist certain words or phrases, meaning that any comments
containing those words will not be allowed to publish. So, if your posts are attracting
spam comments with certain objectionable words in them, you can catch them here before they
publish. You can also filter by the URL, email address, or the IP address.
And, the last section on Avatars allows you to choose the default image displayed for
someone who does not have an online profile associated with the email address they are
providing for the comment. This will also include you if you do not have your User Profile
set up properly. Be sure to see the video on the User Profile in the BlogAid Video Library.
The Media sub-link takes you to a page where you can define the defaults of how common
media elements display on your site.
The first one is for the size of thumbnail images. This will affect how images appear
in your default photo galleries too.
There is also a checkbox to have the images cropped to the exact dimensions you have listed
instead of keeping their aspect ratio.
The next two sizes are for the defaults offered when you upload an image that is too big to
fit on the page. It’s far better if you crop, resize, and optimize your images before
you upload them to WordPress, because this only changes the display size, not the file
size. See the two video tutorials on working with images for more info on that.
WordPress 3.5 changed this last setting and now it only allows you to choose whether or
not you want to use the default organizational structure for your uploaded media. I suggest
you leave this checked.
It used to offer you a way to change the default folder that stores your uploaded media. If
you have some special needs, you’ll probably want to find a tutorial on changing this.
WordPress 3.5 did an overhaul of the entire Media Manager, so be sure to watch the video
tutorial for the new ways you can add images to your site, which covers the process of
uploading media on the fly, and working with the media manager.
The last setting is for your permalink structure, which has a definite impact on your SEO. The
most popular setting now is the Post name structure. Be sure to watch the video tutorial
on Permalinks that goes into detail about these settings.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of the settings in WordPress. It’s the same type
of information I offer in my one-on-one sessions that are tailored uniquely to your site. Be
sure to visit BlogAid.net for more videos, resources, and free downloads to make your
site better.