A few minutes in the Settings menu now saves hours of headaches later. These are the settings every new site should get right on day one. I’ll walk you through each screen in order.
Settings → General
- Site Title: your brand or site name.
- Tagline: a short description of what you do. Replace or clear any placeholder text.
- Administration Email Address: use an inbox you actually check. WordPress sends important notices here.
- Timezone: choose a city in your timezone (like “New York”) rather than a UTC offset, so daylight saving is handled automatically. This keeps scheduled posts publishing on time.
- Date and time format: pick what your audience expects.
Settings → Permalinks
Permalinks are the permanent URLs for your content. Choose Post name, which gives clean, readable links like yourdomain.com/my-first-post/. They’re friendlier for readers and clearer for search engines than number-based links.
Professor’s warning: Set permalinks before you publish content. Changing the structure later can break links people have shared unless you set up redirects.
Settings → Reading
Here you choose whether your homepage shows your latest posts or a static page. For now, leave it as is; we’ll revisit it once you’ve built your homepage.
At the bottom you’ll find Search engine visibility. While your site is under construction, tick “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.” That way half-finished pages are less likely to show up in search results. Note that it’s a request, and search engines decide whether to honor it, so don’t put anything truly private online.
The moment you launch, untick that box. Forgetting it is one of the most common reasons a new site never appears in search. It’s on our launch checklist in Module 7 for exactly that reason.
A few more quick wins
- Settings → Discussion: decide whether you want comments, and consider holding first-time comments for approval.
- Users → Profile: set a “Display name publicly as” that isn’t your login username.
Your assignment
- Update your Site Title, Tagline, admin email and Timezone.
- Set permalinks to Post name and click Save Changes.
- Tick “Discourage search engines” and add a reminder to untick it on launch day.
