Blog Settings

The title of your blog is the first thing that your users are going to see.It will more than likely be the  most prominent thing at the top of any page on your site. Think of this as how you are branding your site.

The biggest and most prominent things on a Coke canis the bright red color and the silver lettering. Most people can tell you someone is holding a coke can from 100 yards away, just by the distinctive red color. You need this sort of branding for your site as well.

Some people have a logo, some people just have text. It is possible to have both!

When I am setting up a WordPress blog in my hosting environment, I admit, I get to skip steps. They have what are called 1-click installs. In reality, there is more than one click involved, but it saves me tons of time when I am setting up WordPress or other Open Source software. When I go through the process, I end up with something similar to what you see in the picture below, a blog with a title and the generic WordPress subtitle “Just another weblog”.

Unless you are “just another weblog”, you probably want to change this text. If you just installed WordPress from scratch, without “cheating” like I do, you will probably see:

Blog

Just another Weblog

This is ok, because we will be making the change for both items in the same place.

The place where we make these changes is in the admin side of the site, where you make posts, and manage users (see Logging Into Wordpress ).  Go to the “Settings” tab on the right side of your admin header:

Settings Page

Blog Title:  This is the title of your blog, in many themes this text is actually displayed in the header of the public side of your blog.

Tagline: Your tagline gives users an idea of what to expect from your blog, at a glance.

Wordpress address (URL):This is the actual address of your blog, it is very important to make sure this is correct.  If it is not correct, you may not be able to log into the admin side of your site.  Also you may run into problems with images and links being incorrect on the site.  I would suggest that you never change this, unless you plan to move your site.

Blog address (URL):This is where you have located your WordPress files, if that is different from where your wordpress address (above) is pointing.  This lets you put all your WordPress files in another directory so that you keep your root directory free from files.

Email address:This is the address that your system will use to notify people, and that it will use to notify you of comments, trackbacks, etc.

Membership:The membership setting can make or break your interaction with your own site.  The reason I say this, is that if you make your commenting open to everyone without registration, you can end up with some very … erm  … interesting comments.

New User Default Role:When a user registers, the system will give them a user type. This determines what their permissions in the system are.

Timezone: Make this match the timezone you are in, don’t worry about your readers. It is important that your timezone matches you.  You can use this chart to match the GMT syntax to your time zone.

Date Format: This is the setting that determines how your dates are displayed on your site.  The letters you can use to format your date can be found here (top of chart): PHP Date Format.

Time Format:This is the setting that determines how your times are displayed on your site.  The letters you can use to format your date can be found here (bottom of chart): PHP Date Format.

Week Starts on:Simple, the day of the week you like your calendar to start on.  Be an individual, start your week on Wednesday.

Next Article: Permalinks