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.