Media

The next menu item in the Settings menu list is Media; click the Media link to make the Media Settings page open (see Figure 3-7).
On the Media Settings page, you can configure the options for how your image files (graphics and photos) are resized for use in your blog.

The first set of options on the Media Settings page deals with images.
WordPress automatically resizes your images for you in three different sizes.
The dimensions are referenced in pixels by width, and then height. (For
example, 150 x 150 means 150 pixels in width by 150 pixels in height.)

✦ Thumbnail Size: The default is 150 x 150; enter the width and height of
your choice. Select the Crop Thumbnail to Exact Dimensions check box to
resize the thumbnail exactly to the width and height you specify. Deselect
this check box to make WordPress resize the image proportionally.
✦ Medium Size: The default is 300 x 300; enter the width and height
numbers of your choice.
✦ Large Size: The default is 1024 x 1024; enter the width and height
numbers of your choice.

In Book VI, we go into detail about WordPress themes and templates, including how you can add image sizes other than just these three. You can use these additional images sizes in and around your Web site, as well as a feature called Featured Image for your posts and articles.

The second set of options on the Media Settings page deals with embed-
ded links and files, such as video and audio files. Select the check box that
says Attempt to Automatically Embed All Plain Text URLs if you want your
WordPress blog to automatically attach a hyperlink to a text-based URL that
you type into your posts or pages. Activating this option means that you
don’t have to copy and paste the full code given to you by services such
as YouTube — instead, you simply paste the hyperlink to the video, and
WordPress automatically does the video embedding for you.
Next, set the width and height for the maximum size you want embedded files to be within your post and pages. Embedded items include video players and audio players that appear within your post or page.
Finally, the last set of options on the Media Settings page is the Uploading
Files section. Here, you can tell WordPress where to store your uploaded
media files:

✦ Store Uploads in This Folder: Type the server path to the folder on your

Web server where you want your file uploads to be stored. The default is wp-content/uploads. You can specify any folder you want. Just be sure that the folder you specify has permissions (chmod) set to 755 so that it’s writable. (See Book II, Chapter 2 for more information on setting file permissions.)
✦ Full URL Path to Files (Optional): You can also type the full URL path
to the Uploads folder as an optional setting. (The full URL path is some-
thing like http://yourdomain.com/wp-content/uploads.)
✦ Organize My Files into Month and Year-Based Folders: Select this
check box to have WordPress organize your uploaded files in folders by
month and by year. Files you upload in September 2010, for example, would be in the following folder: /wp-content/uploads/2010/09/. Likewise, files you upload in October 2010, would be in /wp-content/ uploads/2010/10/.
This check box is selected by default; uncheck it if you don’t want WordPress to organize your files by month and year.

Be sure to click the Save Changes button to save your configurations!

Read More

Avatars

The final section of the Discussion Settings page is Avatars. (See the nearby sidebar, “What are avatars, and how do they relate to WordPress?,” for information about avatars.) In this section, you can select different settings for the use and display of avatars on your site:
1. In the Avatar Display section (see Figure 3-5), decide how to display
avatars on your site.
You have two options:
• Don’t Show Avatars: Select this radio button if you don’t want
your blog to display avatars.
• Show Avatars: Select this radio button to have your blog
display avatars.
2. In the Maximum Rating section, select the radio button for the maxi-
mum avatar rating you want to allow for the avatars that do appear on
your site.
This feature works much like the American movie-rating system. You
can select G, PG, R, and X ratings for the avatars that appear on your
site, as shown in Figure 3-5. If your site is family-friendly, you probably
don’t want it to display R- or X-rated avatars, so select G or PG.
3. Select the radio button for a default avatar in the Default Avatar
section (see Figure 3-5).
4. Click the Save Changes button.
Avatars appear in a couple of places:
✦ The Comments page in the Dashboard: In Figure 3-6, the first two com-
ments display either the commenter’s avatar or the default avatar if the
commenter hasn’t created his or her own.
✦ The comments on individual blog posts in your blog: Figure 3-7 shows
a list of comments on a blog post. If the user doesn’t have an avatar
assigned from http://gravatar.com, the default avatar appears.
To enable the display of avatars in comments on your blog, the Comments
template (comments.php) in your active theme has to contain the code to
display them. Hop on over to Book VI to find information about themes and
templates, including template tags that allow you to display avatars in your
comment list.
Click the Save Changes button after you set all your options on the Discussion Settings page to make the changes take effect.

Read More

Comment Blacklist

In this section, type a list of words, URLs, e-mail addresses, and/or IP
addresses that you want to flat-out ban from your blog. Items placed here

don’t even make it into your comment moderation queue; the WordPress
system filters them as spam. We’d give examples of blacklist words, but the
words we’ve placed in our blacklists aren’t family-friendly and have no place in a nice book like this one.

What are avatars, and how do
they relate to WordPress?

An avatar is an online graphical representa-
tion of an individual. It’s a small graphic icon
that people use to visually represent them-
selves on the Web in areas they participate in
conversations, such as discussion forums and
blog comments. Gravatars are globally recog-
nized avatars; they are avatars that you can
take with you wherever you go. They appear
alongside blog comments, blog posts, and
discussion forums as long as the site you’re

interacting with is Gravatar-enabled. In October
2007, Automattic, the core group behind the
WordPress platform, purchased the Gravatar
service and integrated it into WordPress so
that all could enjoy and benefit from the service.
Gravatars are not automatic; you need to sign
up for an account with Gravatar so that you can
receive an avatar, via your e-mail address. Find
out more about Gravatar by visiting http://
gravatar.com.

Read More

Comment Moderation

In the Comment Moderation section, you can set options to specify what
types of comments are held in the moderation queue to await your approval.

To prevent spammers from spamming your blog with a ton of links, enter a
number in the Hold a Comment in the Queue If It Contains X or More Links
text box. The default number of links allowed is two. Try that setting, and
if you find that you’re getting a lot of spam comments that contain links,
consider dropping that number down to 1, or even 0, to prevent those
comments from being published on your blog. Sometimes, legitimate com-
menters will include a link or two in the body of their comment; after a com-
menter is marked as approved, she is no longer affected by this method of
spam protection.
The large text box in the Comment Moderation section lets you type key-
words, URLs, e-mail addresses, and IP addresses so that if they appear in
comments, you want to hold those comments in the moderation queue for
your approval.

Read More

Before a Comment Appears

The two options in the Before a Comment Appears section tell WordPress
how you want WordPress to handle comments before they appear in
your blog:
✦ An Administrator Must Always Approve the Comment: Disabled by
default, this option keeps every single comment left on your blog in
the moderation queue until you, the administrator, log in and approve
it. Select this check box to enable this option.
✦ Comment Author Must Have a Previously Approved Comment:
Enabled by default, this option requires comments posted by all first-
time commenters to be sent to the comment moderation queue for
approval by the administrator of the blog. After comment authors have
been approved for the first time, they remain approved for every com-
ment thereafter (this cannot be changed). WordPress stores their e-mail
addresses in the database, and any future comments that match any
stored e-mails are approved automatically. This feature is another mea-
sure that WordPress has built in to combat comment spam.

Read More

E-Mail Me Whenever

The two options in the E-Mail Me Whenever section are enabled by default:

✦ Anyone Posts a Comment: Enabling this option means that you receive

an e-mail notification whenever anyone leaves a comment on your blog.
Deselect the check box if you don’t want to be notified by e-mail about
every new comment.

✦ A Comment Is Held for Moderation: This option lets you receive an

e-mail notification whenever a comment is awaiting your approval in the comment moderation queue. (See Book III, Chapter 5 for more information about the comment moderation queue.) You need to deselect this option if you don’t want to receive this notification.

Read More

Other Comment Settings

The Other Comment Settings section tells WordPress how to handle comments:
✦ Comment Author Must Fill Out Their Name and E-Mail: Enabled by
default, this option requires all commenters on your blog to fill in the
Name and E-Mail fields when leaving comments. This option can really
help you combat comment spam. (See Book III, Chapter 5 for informa-
tion on comment spam.) Deselect this check box to disable this option.
✦ Users Must Be Registered and Logged in to Comment: Not enabled by Book III
default, this option allows you to accept comments on your blog from Chapter 3
only people who are registered and logged in as a user on your blog. If the user isn’t logged in, she sees a message that reads, “You Must Be Logged in in Order to Leave a Comment.”
✦ Automatically Close Comments on Articles Older Than X Days: Select
the check box next to this option to tell WordPress you want comments
on older articles to be automatically closed. Fill in the text box provided
with the number of days you want to wait before WordPress closes
comments on articles.
Many bloggers use this very effective anti-spam technique to keep the comment and trackback spam on their blog down.
✦ Enable Threaded (Nested) Comments X Levels Deep: From the drop-
down list, you can select the level of threaded comments you want to
have on your blog. The default is one; you can choose up to ten levels.
Instead of all comments being displayed on your blog in chronological
order (as they are by default), nesting them allows you and your readers
to reply to comments within the comment itself.

✦ Break Comments into Pages with X Comments Per Page: Fill in the text
box with the number of comments you want to appear on one page. This
setting can really help blogs that receive a large number of comments.
It provides you with the ability to break the long string of comments
into several pages, which makes them easier to read and helps speed
up the load time of your site because the page isn’t loading such a large
number of comments at once.
✦ Comments Should Be Displayed with the Older/Newer Comments at
the Top of Each Page: From the drop-down list, select Older or Newer.
Selecting Older displays the comments on your blog in the order of
oldest to newest. Selecting Newer does the opposite: displays the
comments on your blog in the order of newest to oldest.

 

Read More

Discussion

Discussion is the fourth item in the Settings menu list; click it to open the
Discussion Settings page (see Figure 3-4). The sections on this tab let you
set options for handling comments and publishing posts to your blog.

The following sections cover the options available to you in the Discussion Settings page, which deals mainly with how comments and trackbacks are handled in your blog.

With the Default Article Settings options, you can tell WordPress how to handle post notifications. Here are your options:

✦ Attempt to Notify Any Blogs Linked to from the Article: If you select
this check box, your blog sends a notification (or ping) to any site you’ve linked to in your blog posts. This notification is also commonly referred to as a trackback (we discuss trackbacks in Book III, Chapter 5). Deselect this check box if you don’t want these notifications sent.

✦ Allow Link Notifications from Other Blogs (Pingbacks and Trackbacks):

By default, this check box is selected, and your blog accepts notifica-
tions via pings or trackbacks from other blogs that have linked to yours.
Any trackbacks or pings sent to your blog appear on your site in the
Comments section of the blog post. If you deselect this check box, your
blog doesn’t accept pingbacks or trackbacks from other blogs.
✦ Allow People to Post Comments on New Articles: By default, this check
box is selected, and people can leave comments on your blog posts. If
you deselect this check box, no one can leave comments on your blog.
(You can override these settings for individual articles)

Read More

Reading

The third item in the Settings drop-down list is Reading. Click the Reading link to open the Reading Settings page (see Figure 3-3).

You can set the following options in the Reading Settings page:

✦ Front Page Displays: Select the radio button for what you want to

appear on the front page of your blog: your latest posts or a static page. You can find detailed information about using a static page for your front page in Book IV, Chapter 2, including information on how to set it up by using the drop-down menus in this section.

✦ Blog Pages Show at Most: In the text box, enter the maximum number of
posts you want to appear on each blog page.

✦ Syndication Feeds Show the Most Recent: In the text box, enter the

maximum number of posts that you want to appear in your RSS feed at
any time.

✦ For Each Article in a Feed, Show: Select the radio button for either Full

Text or Summary. Full Text publishes the entire post to your RSS feed,
whereas Summary publishes only an excerpt. (Check out Book I,
Chapter 1 for more information on WordPress RSS feeds.)

✦ Encoding for Pages and Feeds: UTF-8 is the default, and recommended,
character encoding for your blog. Character encoding is code that han-
dles the storage and transmission of the text from your blog through
the Internet connection. Your safest bet is to leave the default setting in
place because UTF-8 is the most commonly accepted character encod-
ing and supports a wide range of languages.

Be sure to click the Save Changes button after you set all your options in the Reading Settings page to make the changes take effect.

 

Read More

Writing

This page lets you set some basic options for writing your posts. Table 3-1 gives you some information on choosing how your posts look and how WordPress handles some specific conditions.

After you set your options, be sure to click the Save Changes button; other-

wise, the changes won’t take effect.

 

Writing Settings Options

Option                    Function                                         Default

Size of the                Determines the size of the text box        Ten lines

Post Box                  on the Write Post page. The bigger

the number, the taller the box.

Formatting               Determines whether WordPress           Converts

converts emoticons to graphics and     emoticons —

whether WordPress corrects inval-  such as :-) and

idly nested XHTML automatically.          :-P — to graph-

In general, we recommend select-         ics and corrects

ing this option. (You can find more       invalidly nested

information about valid XHTML             XHTML

code at http://validator.

w3.org/docs/#docs_all.)

 

Default Post              Select the category that WordPress

Category                 defaults to any time you forget to

choose a category when you pub-
lish a post.

Default Post              Select the format that WordPress

Format                    defaults to any time you create

a post and do not assign a post format. (This is theme specific, not all themes support post formats; see Book VI, Chapter 6.)


Uncategorized

 

Default Link              Select the category that WordPress       Uncategorized

Category                 defaults to any time you forget to

categorize a link.

Press This               Drag and drop the Press This link to     N/A

the bookmark toolbar of your Web
browser, and then use it to easily
publish content that you find around
the Internet directly to your blog.

Post via E-Mail          Publish blog posts from your e-mail       N/A

account by entering the e-mail and
server information for the account
you’ll be using to send posts to your
WordPress blog.

Option                    Function                                           Default

Remote                   Enable Atom Publishing Protocol or         Disabled

Publishing               one of the XML-RPC publishing inter-

faces that enable you to post to your

WordPress blog from a remote Web

site or desktop publishing application.

Update Services        Indicate which ping service you        http://rpc.

Note: This option       want to use to notify the world that   pingomatic.

is available only if  you’ve made updates, or new posts,        com

your blog is made      to your blog. The default, XML-RPC

public in the           (http://rpc.pingomatic.

Privacy settings,    com), updates all the popular ser-

covered in the          vices simultaneously.

“Privacy” sec-
tion, later in this
chapter.

Go to http://codex.wordpress.org/Update_Services for compre-

hensive information on update services.

Read More

General

 

After you install the WordPress software and log in, you can put a personal stamp on your blog by giving it a title and description, setting your contact e-mail address, and identifying yourself as the author of the blog. You take care of these and other settings on the General Settings page.

To begin personalizing your blog, start with your general settings by following these steps:

1. Click General link in the Settings menu list.

The General Settings page appears (see Figure 3-1).

2. Enter the name of your blog in the Site Title text box.

The title you enter here is the one that you gave your blog to identify it as your own. In Figure 3-1, Lisa gave the new blog the title WordPress All-In-One For Dummies, which appears on the blog, as well as in the title bar of the viewer’s Web browser.

Give your blog an interesting and identifiable name. You can use Fried
Green Tomatoes, for example, if you’re blogging about the topic, the
book, or the movie, or even anything remotely related to the lovely
Southern dish.

3. In the Tagline text box, enter a five- to ten-word phrase that describes
your blog.

Figure 3-1 shows that the tagline is by Lisa Sabin-Wilson. Therefore, this blog displays the blog title, followed by the tagline: WordPress All-in-One For Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

The general Internet-surfing public can view your blog title and tagline,
which various search engines (such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN) grab
for indexing, so choose your words with this fact in mind. (You can find
more information about search engine optimization, or SEO, in Book V.)

4. In the WordPress Address (URL) text box, enter the location where
you installed your WordPress blog software.

Be sure to include the http:// portion of the URL and the entire path

to your WordPress installation — for example, http://yourdomain.
com. If you installed WordPress in a folder in your directory — in a
folder called wordpress, for example — you need to make sure to
include it here. If we installed WordPress in a folder called wordpress,
the WordPress address would be http://yourdomain.com/
wordpress (where yourdomain.com is your domain name).

5. In the Site Address (URL) text box, enter the Web address where
people can find your blog by using their Web browsers.

Typically, what you enter here is the same as your domain name (http://
yourdomain.com). If you install WordPress in a subdirectory of your site,
the WordPress installation URL is different from the blog URL. If you install
WordPress at http://yourdomain.com/wordpress/ (WordPress URL),
you need to tell WordPress that you want the blog to appear at http://
yourdomain.com (the blog URL).

6. Enter your e-mail address in the E-Mail Address text box.

WordPress sends messages about the details of your blog to this

e-mail address. When a new user registers for your blog, for example, WordPress sends you an e-mail alert.

7. Select a Membership option.

Select the Anyone Can Register check box if you want to keep registration on your blog open to anyone. Keep the check box unchecked if you’d rather not have open registration on your blog.

8. From the New User Default Role drop-down list, select the role that
you want new users to have when they register for user accounts in
your blog.

You need to understand the differences among the user roles because
each user role is assigned a different level of access to your blog,
as follows:

•  Subscriber: The default role. You may want to maintain this role

as the one assigned to new users, particularly if you don’t know

who’s registering. Subscribers have access to the Dashboard page,
and they can view and change the options in their profiles on the
Your Profile and Personal Options page. (They don’t have access
to your account settings, however — only to their own.) Each user
can change his username, e-mail address, password, bio, and other
descriptors in his user profile. Subscribers’ profile information is
stored in the WordPress database, and your blog remembers them
each time they visit, so they don’t have to complete the profile

information each time they leave comments on your blog.

•  Contributor: In addition to the access Subscribers have, Contributors
can upload files and write, edit, and manage their own posts.
Contributors can write posts, but they can’t publish the posts;
the Administrator reviews all Contributor posts and decides
whether to publish them. This setting is a nice way to moderate
content written by new authors.

•  Author: In addition to the access Contributors have, Authors can
publish and edit their own posts.

•  Editor: In addition to the access Authors have, Editors can moderate
comments, manage categories, manage links, edit pages, and edit
other Authors’ posts.

•  Administrator: Administrators can edit all the options and settings
in the WordPress blog.

9. In the Timezone section, select your UTC time from the drop-down list.

This setting refers to the number of hours that your local time differs
from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). This setting ensures that all
the blog posts and comments left on your blog are time-stamped with
the correct time. If you’re lucky enough, like Lisa, to live on the frozen
tundra of Wisconsin, which is in the Central Standard Time (CST) Zone,
you choose - from the drop-down list because that time zone is

6 hours off UTC.

If you’re unsure what your UTC time is, you can find it at the Greenwich
Mean Time (http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com) Web site. GMT
is essentially the same thing as UTC. WordPress also lists some major cities in the Timezone drop-down list so that you can more easily
choose your time zone if you don’t know it.

10. In the Date Format text box, enter the format in which you want the
date to appear in your blog.

This setting determines the style of the date display. The default format displays time like this: January 1, 2011.

Select a different format by clicking the radio button to the left of the
option you want. You can also customize the date display by selecting
the Custom option and entering your preferred format in the text box

provided. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can find out how to custom-         Book III

ize the date format at http://codex.wordpress.org/Formatting_               Chapter 3

Date_and_Time.

11. In the Time Format text box, enter the format for how you want time
to display in your blog.

This setting is the style of the time display. The default format displays time like this: 12:00 a.m.

Select a different format by clicking the radio button to the left of the
option you want. You can also customize the date display by select-
ing the Custom option and entering your preferred format in the text
box provided; find out how at http://codex.wordpress.org/
Formatting_Date_and_Time.

You can format the time and date in several ways. Go to http://
us3.php.net/date to find potential formats at the PHP Web site.

12. From the Week Starts On drop-down list, select the day on which the

week starts in your calendar.

Displaying the calendar in the sidebar of your blog is optional. If you choose to display the calendar, you can select the day of the week on which you want your calendar to start.

Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of any page where you set new
options. If you don’t click Save Changes, your settings aren’t saved, and
WordPress reverts to the preceding options. Each time you click the Save
Changes button, WordPress reloads the current page, displaying the new
options that you just set.

Read More

Configuring the Settings

At the very bottom of the navigation menu, you can find the Settings option. Click Settings, and a menu list opens that contains the following links, which we discuss in the sections that follow:

✦ General
✦ Writing
✦ Reading
✦ Discussion
✦ Media

✦ Privacy

✦ Permalinks

Read More

Creating Your Own Workspace

The inline documentation, and the topics and text you find in the Help tab,

exist to assist users while they work with the WordPress platform, helping
make the experience as easy to understand as possible. Other places on the
Web that you can visit to find help and useful support for WordPress include
the WordPress Support Forums at http://wordpress.org/support.

Creating Your Own Workspace
Throughout the different pages of your WordPress Dashboard, you can
apply the customization features that we cover for the main Dashboard
page in the section “Arranging the Dashboard to Your Tastes,” earlier in this
chapter. Every section of the WordPress Dashboard is customizable, with
drag-and-drop modules, screen options, and inline help and documentation.
Figure 2-4 displays the Posts page in the WordPress Dashboard (the Posts page
is covered in greater detail in Book IV, Chapter 1), with the Screen Options
menu displayed, showing the different options for customization, including

✦ Check boxes that you can to select or deselect to display or hide,

respectively, the Author, Categories, Tags, Comments, and Date of
the posts listed on the Posts page
✦ A text box in which you can input the number of posts you want
displayed on the Posts page

The Help topics on the Posts page that appear when you
click the Help tab at the top of the page to display the inline documentation for the page.

In the Help menu on each page of the WordPress Dashboard, you can find
links that lead you to other areas on the Internet that contain additional help and support topics and resources so that you can find out more about the different WordPress features.

Read More

Finding Inline Documentation and Help

The developers of the WordPress software really put in time and effort to provide users with tons of inline documentation that provides several tips and hints right inside the Dashboard. You can generally find inline documentation for nearly every WordPress feature you’ll use.

Inline documentation refers to those small sentences or phrases that you see alongside or below a feature in WordPress that give a short, but very helpful, explanation about what the feature is. Figure 2-3 shows the General Settings page, where a lot of inline documentation and guiding tips correspond with each feature. These tips can clue you into what the features are, how to use them, and some basic recommended settings.

In addition to the inline documentation that you find scattered throughout
the Dashboard, a helpful Help tab is located in the upper-right corner of
your Dashboard. Click this tab to open a panel that contains a lot of text —
that text is documentation relevant to the page you’re currently viewing in
your Dashboard. For example, if you’re viewing the General Settings page,
the Help tab displays documentation relevant to the General Settings page.
Likewise, if you’re viewing the Add New Post page, then the Help tab dis-
plays documentation with topics relevant to the settings and features you

find on the Add New Post page within your Dashboard.

Read More

Changing the Dashboard layout

We’re positive that everyone works differently, in terms of how we like our workspace laid out. Personally, Lisa likes to have one long column of items so that she can scroll through and focus on one area, in particular, without other things to the right and left of her periphery.

In the same Screen Options area where you can remove modules (as dis-
cussed in the preceding section), you can also change the format of your Dashboard by choosing to have one, two, three, or four columns displayed on your Dashboard — just follow these few steps:

1. Click the Screen Options button at the top of the Dashboard.
The Screen Options pop-up menu opens.

2. In the Screen Layout Options section of the menu, choose the number
of columns you want displayed.

You have the choice of one, two, three, or four columns — check the radio button to the left of the number you want, and your Dashboard display changes immediately.

3. Click the Screen Options button again to close the Screen
Options menu.

You can see that Lisa likes all her stuff in one long column, which her per-
sonal blog’s Dashboard shows in Figure 2-2, where she chose to display
her Dashboard in a one-column layout. In Figure 2-2, almost all of Lisa’s
Dashboard modules are closed — you can open and close them when you
need to, based on what you need to see and do within your Dashboard at
any given time.

By using the features that enable you to customize your Dashboard, you can create your own, individualized workspace that works best for you, based on how you use WordPress. With these features, everyone can customize his own WordPress experience, and no two WordPress user experiences are necessarily the same — like snowflakes!

Read More