Are you wondering what everything means in your WordPress Writing Settings? In this post, I will cover all of the options available to you in your WordPress Writing Settings to make your designing easier.

WordPress Writing Settings

You have probably already realized how many options you have with your WordPress site. WordPress is a powerful software that allows users to create professional looking blogs and websites.

There are many options that you will never need to adjust or rarely visit but it is always a good idea to become familiar with all of the options you have.

I have left everything in the Writing Settings as the default settings except the testimonial option. I will explain all of the options so you can decide on what will be best for your art blog.

WordPress Writing Settings Option

First, you will need to log into your WordPress dashboard.

Hover over the Settings link and click the Writing link.

The following are the details of the fields on the Writing Settings page.

Formatting − This field defines two options you have for a better user experience.

The first option Convert emoticons like 🙂 and 😛 to graphics on display will turn text-based emoticons into graphics-based emoticons.

The second option WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically corrects the invalid XHTML placed within the posts or pages.

Wikipedia defines XHTML as:

Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) is part of the family of XML markup languages. It mirrors or extends versions of the widely used Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated.

Note:  you will not need to be concerned about the following options. Leave them as the default settings.

Default Post Category − Is a category to be applied to a post.

You will have the option to categorize each post when you are finished writing it. I will cover more about categories in the future.

Default Post Format − Is used by themes to select a post format to be applied to a post or create different styles for different types of posts.

Post via e-mail − Uses e-mail address to create posts and publishes posts on your blog through e-mail. To use this, you’ll need to set up a secret e-mail account with a POP3 access, and any mail received at this address will be posted.

Mail Server − Allows reading the e-mails that you send to WordPress and stores them for retrieval. For this, you need to have POP3 compatible email server and it will have URI address such as mail.example.com, which you should enter here.

Login Name − To log into your dashboard, WordPress will need its own e-mail account. The Login Name will use this e-mail address and should be kept as a secret as spammers will post links redirecting to their own websites.

Password − Set a strong password for the above e-mail address. It is recommended to change your password several times throughout the year to prevent hackers from hacking into your site.

Default Mail Category − Allows selecting a custom category for all the posts that are published via Post by e-mail feature.

Update Services − When you publish a new post, WordPress will automatically notify the site update services in the box. See the Update Services on the codex for the long list of possible services. You will have to Separate multiple service URLs with line breaks.

Conclusion:

You might never need to visit this section of your WordPress dashboard but it is good to know all of the options that are available for you.

You might also be interested in:

• WordPress Dashboard Basics – Tutorial for Artists
• What do I do After Installing WordPress – Art Marketing Plan
• WordPress SEO: Optimize Your Artist Website for Search Engines

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