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)

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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.

 

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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!

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Removing Dashboard Modules

If you find that your Dashboard contains a few modules that you just never use, you can get rid of them altogether by following these steps:

1. Click the Screen Options button at the top of the Dashboard.
The Screen Options pop-up menu opens, displaying the title of each module with a check box to the left of each title.
2. Deselect the check box for the module you want to hide on

your Dashboard.
The check mark disappears from the box, and the module disappears from your Dashboard.
If you want a module that you hid to reappear, you can simply enable that
module by selecting the module’s check box in the Screen Options menu.

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Arranging the Dashboard to Your Tastes

You can arrange the order of the modules in your Dashboard to suit your

tastes. WordPress places a great deal of emphasis on user experience, and a big part of that effort results in your ability to create a Dashboard that you find most useful. You can very easily change the modules to display and the order in which they display.

Follow these steps to move the Right Now module so that it appears on the right side of your Dashboard page:

 1. Hover your mouse on the title bar of the Right Now module.

When hovering over the title, your mouse cursor changes to the Move
cursor (a cross with arrows on a PC or the hand cursor on a Mac).

2. Click and hold your mouse button and drag the Right Now module to
the right side of the screen.

While you drag the module, a light-gray box with a dotted border

appears on the right side of your screen. That gray box is a guide that shows you where you can drop the module. See Figure 2-1.

3. Release the mouse button when you have the Right Now module

in place.

The Right Now module is positioned on the right side of your Dashboard page.

The other modules on the right side of the Dashboard have shifted

down, and the Recent Comments Module is the module in the top left of the Dashboard page.

4. (Optional) Click the title bar of the Right Now module.

The module collapses. Click the title bar again to expand the module. You
can keep that module open or closed based on your own preference.

 

Repeat these steps with each module that you want to move on the

Dashboard by dragging and dropping them so that they appear in the order you prefer.

When you navigate away from the Dashboard, WordPress remembers
the changes you made. When you return, you still see your customized
Dashboard, and you don’t need to redo these changes in the future.

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Other WordPress News

The Other WordPress News module of the Dashboard pulls in posts from a

site called WordPress Planet (http://planet.wordpress.org). By main-
taining the default setting in this area, you stay in touch with several posts
made by folks who are involved in WordPress development, design, and

troubleshooting. You can find many interesting and useful tidbits if you keep this area intact. Quite often, we find great information about new plugins or themes, problem areas and support, troubleshooting, and new ideas, so we tend to stick with the default setting.

WordPress is all about user experience, however, so you can change the
options to specify what appears in this area. You can change the items in

this module in the same way that you change the options for the WordPress Development Blog module (see the preceding section).

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WordPress Blog

 

When you first install WordPress, by default, the WordPress Development

Blog module displays the two most recent updates from the official WordPress
Development Blog at http://wordpress.org/news. You see the title of the
last post, the date it was published, and a short excerpt of the post. Click a
title to go directly to that post on the WordPress Development Blog.

We highly recommend following the updates of the WordPress Development
Blog. Every single time you log in to your WordPress Dashboard, a glance at
this section informs you about any news, updates, or alerts from the makers
of WordPress. You can find out about any new versions of the software,
security patches, or other important news regarding the software you’re
using to power your blog.

Although we recommend that you keep the WordPress Development Blog

updates in this section, the WordPress platform lets you change this module to display posts from another blog of your choosing. You can accomplish this change by following these steps:

1. Hover your mouse over the WordPress Development Blog module
title and click the Configure link that appears to the right.

The module changes to display several options for adjusting the information contained in the module (see Figure 1-8).

2. Type your preferred RSS feed in the Enter the RSS Feed URL Here

text box.

3. Type your preferred title in the Give the Feed a Title (Optional)
text box.

4. Select a number from the How Many Items Would You Like to Display
drop-down list.

The default is 2, but you can display up to 20 by making a different selection from the drop-down list.

5. Specify whether you want to display the item’s content.

Item content refers to the text content of the post. If you don’t select the Display Item Content check box, WordPress doesn’t display an excerpt of the post — only the post title.

6. Specify whether you want to display the name of the person who
wrote the post.

Leave the Display Item Author if Available check box unchecked if you don’t want the author’s name displayed.

7. Specify whether you want to display the date.

Leave the Display Item Date check box unchecked if you don’t want the date displayed.

8. Click the Submit button to save your changes.

The Dashboard page refreshes with your new changes.

If you change your mind, click the Cancel link that appears to the right of the WordPress Development Blog title. Clicking Cancel discards any changes you made and keeps the original settings intact.

The title of the WordPress Development Blog module changes to the title
you chose in Step 3 of the preceding list. Figure 1-9 shows that we changed
the title to Lisa’s Blog, which now displays the RSS Feed from Lisa’s blog,
using the Feed URL: http://lisasabin-wilson.com/feed.

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Recent Drafts

If you’re using a brand-new WordPress blog and this is a new installation,

the Recent Drafts module displays the message There Are No Drafts at the
Moment because you haven’t written any drafts. As time goes on, however,
and you write a few posts in your blog, you may save some of those posts
as drafts — to be edited and published later. Those drafts show up in the

If you’re using a brand-new WordPress blog and this is a new installation,

the Recent Drafts module displays the message There Are No Drafts at the
Moment because you haven’t written any drafts. As time goes on, however,
and you write a few posts in your blog, you may save some of those posts
as drafts — to be edited and published later. Those drafts show up in the
Recent Drafts module.

The Recent Drafts module displays up to five drafts, showing for each the

title of the post, the date it was last saved, and a short excerpt. A View All

link also appears; click that link to go the Manage Posts page, where you can view, edit, and manage your blog posts (check out Book IV, Chapter 2 for more information). Figure 1-7 displays the Recent Drafts module, with five posts in draft status, awaiting publication.

 

 

The Recent Drafts module displays up to five drafts, showing for each the

title of the post, the date it was last saved, and a short excerpt. A View All

link also appears; click that link to go the Manage Posts page, where you can view, edit, and manage your blog posts (check out Book IV, Chapter 2 for more information). Figure 1-7 displays the Recent Drafts module, with five posts in draft status, awaiting publication.

 

 

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Plugins

 

We get into the management and use of WordPress plugins in detail in Book VII; however, for the purposes of this section, we discuss the functions of the Plugins module in the Dashboard.

The Plugins module includes three titles of WordPress plugins that are

linked to its individual plugin page within the WordPress Plugin Directory.
The Plugins module pulls information via RSS feed from the official
WordPress Plugin Directory at http://wordpress.org/extend/
plugins. This module displays a plugin from three different plugin

categories in the official WordPress Plugin Directory: Most Popular,

Newest Plugins, and Recently Updated.

The Plugins module doesn’t have an Edit link, so you can’t customize the information that it displays. Use this module to discover new plugins that can help you do some fun and exciting things with your blog.

The Plugins module does have a very exciting feature that you can use to install, activate, and manage plugins on your blog. Just follow these steps to make it happen:

1. Click the Install link next to the title of the plugin.

The Plugin Information pop-up window opens. It displays the various

bits of information about the plugin you chose, such as title, description, version, author, date last updated, and the number of times the plugin was downloaded.

2. Click the Install Now button.

This button appears at the top right of the Plugin Information window.

The Plugin Information window closes, and the Install Plugins page in your
WordPress Dashboard opens, displaying a confirmation message that the
plugin has been downloaded, unpacked, and successfully installed.

3. Specify whether to activate the plugin or proceed to the Plugins page.
Two links appear below the confirmation message:

•  Activate Plugin: Activate the plugin you just installed on your blog.

•  Return to Plugins Page: Go to the Manage Plugins page.

We cover the installation and activation of WordPress plugins in further depth in Book VII.

4. Click the Dashboard link to return to the Dashboard.

The Dashboard link appears at the top of the left menu on every page of your WordPress Dashboard.

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Incoming Links

 The module below the Recent Comments module in the Dashboard is

Incoming Links. It lists all the blog-savvy people who wrote a blog post that
links to your blog. When your blog is brand new, you won’t see any incoming
links listed in this section. Don’t despair, however; as time goes on, you’ll
see this listing of links fill up while more and more people discover you and
your inspired writings!

In the meantime, the Incoming Links module shows, “This dashboard widget
queries Google Blog Search so that when another blog links to your site it
will show up here. It has found no incoming links . . . yet. It’s okay — there is
no rush.” The phrase Google Blog Search is a link; when you click it, you go
to the Google Blog Search directory, which is a search engine for blogs only.

Follow these steps to edit the Incoming Links module:

1. Hover your mouse on the title of the Incoming Links module.

A new link labeled Configure appears directly to the right of the Incoming Links title.

2. Click the Configure link.

The Incoming Links module expands and you see settings that you can configure (see Figure 1-4).

3. Add a URL in the Enter the RSS Feed URL Here text box.

You can enter the URL of any RSS feed that you want to display incoming
links to your site. Examples of feeds you can use include such sources
as Technorati (http://technorati.com), Yahoo! Search (http://
search.yahoo.com), or Social Mention (www.socialmention.com).
You’re not restricted to using the Google Blog Search engine (http://
blogsearch.google.com) to provide your Incoming Links information.

4. Select how many items you want to display from the drop-down list.

The default is 5, but you can display up to 20 items (incoming links).

5. Check the Display Item Date box if you want each incoming link to
display the date the link was created.

If you don’t want the date display, leave that box blank.

6. Click the Submit button to save all your preferences.

Clicking Submit resets the Incoming Links module with your new settings saved.

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