How to Set Up and Configure WordPress

How to Configure Your WordPress Blog

Once you’re in your WordPress admin screens you can start configuring your blog.

Wordpress is extremely flexible and provides a lot of options. Plus, with the introduction of WordPress 3.0 you have the ability to operate multiple sites from one installation.

So, for simplicity, I’ll focus for now on setting up a simple, single site, 1-author blog.

Once you’ve got these steps down, changing the configuration to add more authors or other features later will be straightforward.

You can make changes at any time, but if you get stuck by all means drop me a line.

So here are the steps to follow:

Go to your Settings>General screen:

Most of the settings here are self explanatory.

Give some thought to your blog title and tag line. Your blog title will become the META page title for your blog that the search engines look out for, so choose a title that contains your keywords and is closely relevant to the subject of your blog.

If you chose a good domain name earlier it definitely helps if your blog title is very similar. Absolutely the same would be the best.

And amplify that with your tag line. If you don’t want to use a tag line at this point, that’s OK - you can always add one later.

I suggest initially leaving all other fields on this screen at the default values except for the ‘Timezone’, ‘Time’, ‘Date’ and ‘Week starts on’ options at the bottom. Set these to reflect your location.

Unless you know what you're doing, you should definitely not touch the 'WordPress Address and Blog Address fields.

Next go to your Settings>Writing screen:

I like to increase the size of the post box to 15 lines – it gives me a bit more space.

But there’s also a button in your post write screen (visual view) to make it full screen if you want to. You can toggle this on and off.

So setting the post box size to 15 lines is not critical – just something I like to do because that’s where I do most of my work.

If you’re planning to use the HTML view when writing posts then check the box against ‘WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML’.

Note: WordPress uses HTML filters which restrict the amount of HTML you can use, even in the HTML view. So if you're planning to do a lot of work in the HTML view you'll need to install the Raw-HTML plugin. I wrote a review here.

Because of this, my advice is not to use the HTML view for anything other than inserting something you can’t do through the ‘Visual’ view, until you're more familiar with WordPress and HTML. Switch to the HTML view, do what you need to do and then immediately return to the Visual view.

If you plan to post by email be sure to enter your email details at the bottom.

I suggest you change the default category for email posts. Some email plugins enable you to select the category you want your post to go into, but if there's a problem they'll go into the default category and you don't want a large 'Uncategorised' category!

You can make this a reasonably general category that relates to the subject of your blog.

At this stage leave all other settings at their defaults.

Next go to your Settings>Reading screen:

Here’s where you can choose what you want your front page to display.

Unlike Blogger, for example, WordPress gives you the option to make your blog look like a traditional blog or a normal static website. You can change how it appears with the first option: ‘Front Page Displays’.

If you select ‘Your Latest Posts’ it will look like a traditional blog, with your latest posts in reverse order on your front page.

If you select a static page it will look like a normal, static website.

If you select this option your blog posts will appear under a menu item called 'Blog' and your front page will be a static page.

You might want to use this setting if you’re running a small business, for example.

You could create a Home page for your business and make this the start page. To anyone visiting the site it would look like a normal static website with an integrated blog.

This would work best if you’ve installed your WordPress installation in its own domain, rather than as a directory within your existing domain.

The menu will then automatically be populated with a ‘Blog’ tab or link, which will contain your blog posts.

The whole lot will then come together to look like a normal site with an integrated blog – very professional.

I generally set my blog pages to show at most 5 posts. I also use the 'More' tag - which is a button on the toolbar in the visual view. This results in excerpts of posts being shown on the front page.

The reason I do this is to get as much content in front of readers as possible without making the front page too long.

The rest of the settings on this screen I leave at the default values.

Next go to your Settings>Discussion screen:

This is an important screen if you’re wanting to build a community and get lots of interaction going on your blog – comments and trackbacks.

On this screen I check everything except: ‘Users must be registered and logged in to comment’, ‘Automatically close comments older than 14 days’, and ‘An Administrator must always approve the comment’. Those three I leave un-checked.

In the future, when your blog is attracting thousands of readers a day, you may find some older articles attracting a lot of spam.

If this arises you can check the 'Automatically close comments older than 14 days' but set the number of days to something much higher. Doing this will close comments on all your posts older than the time you set, which will kill off those spam comments on old posts.

From the bottom of the page I select: ’show avatars’ and ‘mystery man’.  You’ll need to select the rating based on the content you’re planning to put up.

Next go to your Settings>Media screen:

Image sizes:

This is where you define the default settings for images that you upload to WordPress through the 'Add Image' button in the Add New Post screen.

The settings here will be driven by the column widths in your layout.

For example, If your main content column is wide - say 600 - 700 pixels, accepting the default settings here would be fine.

But if your theme gives you a narrower main column you may want to reduce these sizes to something around 50 pixels less than your content column width.

Once you're regularly inserting images and know the dimensions you want them set at you can come back here and change the settings as necessary.

Embeds

WordPress 2.9 brought the ability for you to simply paste the URL of a video into the Visual View in your New Post Add screen and it will embed the video automatically.

This option is enabled by default, but you need to set the maximum size of videos to embed here.

If you don't, and the video is wider than your main content column, it will over-flow into the sidebars and look a mess.

As with inserting pictures, you need to select a width which is at least 50 pixels less than your content column (which would leave a 25 pixel margin on each side).

Next go to the Settings>Privacy screen:

The settings on this screen drive WordPress' virtual robots.txt file. Unless you want to keep your blog private you should select the top option: 'Make your blog visible to everyone...'.

Selecting the bottom option will block the search engines so you won't be found by anyone unless they have the exact link to your blog.

Next go to your Settings>Permalink screen:

This is another important screen – this time for SEO purposes.

On this screen I select the 2nd option, which includes the name and date of the post. Having the name of the post in the URL is a definite benefit in the search engine stakes!

You’re probably going to be changing this selection, because the 2nd option is not the default. On older versions of WordPress, or if WordPress cannot write to your .htaccess file, the system will generate some code that you need to copy and paste into your .htaccess file.

Scroll down to see whether any code is generated and, if it is, copy and paste it into your .htaccess file. If you're not familiar with your .htaccess file ask your hosting provider for help.

Mostly, though, you will not need to do anything other than select the permalink style you want and save the changes.

Finally go to your Settings>Miscellaneous screen:

This screen defines folders that WordPress uses when it uploads files or images. Unless you have very good reason and know what you're doing you should not touch the settings in this screen.

OK – so those are the main settings for your Wordpress application.

They’re the settings I use because they give me the best balance between control, security, efficiency and search engine friendliness.

Now you're ready to start looking for plugins to strengthen various areas of WordPress.