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Wordpress - A Beginners Guide Part 4 - “Admin Settings”
Posted on August 13, 2008
Filed Under Guides |
I was just thinking that it is probably worthwhile to add another part to the beginner series while i think of it, so here it is. This follows on from the Themes and Plugins post and deals with all of the little Admin settings that should be tweaked before you get started blogging. I’ll look at reading/writing settings, permalinks, update services (for social networks) and more.
So let’s get started.
Most of the settings in WP-Admin>Settings are pretty self-explanatory though there are a few things that you should always remember to do as a matter of course. First of all, go to Settings>General tab and check everything looks correct. I find it’s always a good idea to create a new email address first in your hosting cpanel for you blog e.g. admin@myblogname.com then you can add it in this section - this address is what users see when they receive any correspondence from your site, so it is pretty important. The other key thing in this section is the default role of users when they register - it defaults to Subscriber, but be aware that the Subscriber role does not mean a user will get your RSS feeds, only that they will be free to comment without moderation when they are logged in.
Next, go to Settings>Writing - most settings can be left as default, of course just check everything looks ok. The important part of this section is the Update Services text box - this is so you can add ‘automatic update’ service providers to ping various sites whenever your blog produces a new post. Why bother with this? So you can get more traffic. Check out the Wordpress Official Codex for more info.
These links below are supposedly active, so i just copy and paste these into the text box and then save the changes:
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://blogping.unidatum.com/RPC2/
Next go to Settings>Reading - leave everything as default here unless you want something specific. A cool thing in section is the ‘Front page displays’ part, where you can specifiy a static page you have created rather than the default option of your latest X number of posts. Why would you change this? Maybe you don’t want your posts on the front page, making it more like a non-blog website, showing some fancy graphics or something…?
Now go to Settings>Permalinks and under ‘Common Settings’ select the ‘custom structure’ radio button and enter /%postname%/ into the text field. What this does is makes all your url’s appear pretty, using the post title instead of some nonsense url the search engines won’t like. An example is the url of a post titled ‘Wordpress Rocks’ would appear in the browser and to Search Engines as http://www.wordpressninja.com/wordpress-rocks instead of http://www.wordpressninja.com/?p=123.
This little change can improve your search rankings a lot, so don’t forget to add it to all of your blogs, preferably before you start posting as sometimes old posts can get broken links due to the permalinks being changed and you may have to go back and edit each of the old permalinks manually. After changing this, always go back and check any old posts (if you have any) and pages to make sure they still work and their permalinks appear as pretty urls.
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About WPNinja
Hi, i am the Wordpress Ninja. My name is Paul and my goal is to be able to answer everyone's Wordpress questions (for free) and post the best solutions on this blog. So for all questions and issues please post in the Wordpress Ninja Forum
[...] Installation And Setup” Wordpress - A Beginners Guide Part 3 - “Choosing Themes And Plugins” Wordpress - A Beginners Guide Part 4 - “Admin Settings” 10 Things You Must Do When Changing WordPress Themes WordPress : The Complete Post-Install [...]
Dear Paul,
The information you provide is very helpful, especially to a blog newby like me.
I am going to use a Prosense theme. I want my logo to be displayed in the header, and I can’t seem to get it done. Can you help?
Thank you in advance.
Hi Sibyl,
My post http://www.wordpressninja.com/wordpress-theme-customizations-header-images-with-hyperlinks/ walks you through adding an image (and making it clickable) to the header. It applies to Prosense as well. Try following the steps there and if you get stuck let me know.
cheers,
Paul
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[...] Wordpress - A Beginners Guide Part 4 - “Admin Settings” . . [...]
Great post!! I just have to copy it
Great work, all information provided by you is very helpful. I started blog yesterday and with your kind help get it done very easily.
I have some questions to ask, how do I display the logo, adsense etc.
Thank you in advance.
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