Before you get too involved in customizing the look of the front-end of your WPHubSite WordPress website it’s good to get things in the back-end all taken care of. There are several important WordPress settings that need to be taken care of so your website functions as it should as you’re creating it.
For example, if you don’t set your website permalinks (more on that later) and start creating blog posts then your URL structure is going to change and that’s never good. Once you figure out a URL structure then it’s best to stick with it.
There are several sections to WordPress settings. This article will go through all the main topics. There are two more you will see in your dashboard that this article won’t cover, they’re advanced settings for the WPHubSite Site Builder. In most cases, you won’t even need to touch the Site Builder settings (and likely are better off not changing them) but you do have the ability to modify them.
Now for updating your WordPress settings so you can get on with the good stuff customizing your site and adding some really cool HubSpot integrations into it. If you’d prefer a video with similar information, check out the update WordPress settings video below.
The WPHubSite WordPress Admin Dashboard
Step 1: Log into your WordPress admin dashboard with your website URL and /login/ at the end. It will look something like this: yourdomain.com/login/.
Step 2: Click the Settings item on the dashboard menu. You can also hover over it to access any sub-section of the settings menu.
These are the WPHubSite WordPress Settings that are covered in the help article:
WPHubSite WordPress General Settings
There is a mixture of steps and options from here on. Each number will either be referred to as a step (where you need to take action) or an option (explaining what the setting means and what your options are).
Option 3: You can change the name of your website here. This should be your business name with no extra descriptive information. It’s used in many places in WordPress to show who the website belongs to. You’ll find it’s also vital to SEO and is placed at the end of page and post titles unless you change it. You don’t want to add too much so just your business name is best. You may not even have to change this because it will be in here from when you set up your account. Now you know where it is if you ever need to change it, though!
Option 4: The tagline isn’t used nearly as much as the site title. In fact, you’ll likely never see it anywhere on your site unless you turn it on when you customize the look of your site. Put something that describes your website or business that’s also short but don’t worry too much about the tagline.
Option 5: This is where you can update the main admin email address for your website. We’ll use this email address if we ever need to contact you but it’s likely this will rarely be used. It’s not the same as the email address of the administrator account, that’s a different email address.
Option 6: Set your website’s timezone. This is important because comment times, blog post times, and more will all show the correct time if you take the time to set this.
Step 7: Always click the Save button before you go to any other page. If you don’t save then you’ll lose all changes you made.
WPHubSite WordPress Reading Settings
Step 8: Click the Reading item in the Settings menu.
Option 9: This is best left as the default setting (a static page) for most websites. The only scenario where you might want to use your latest posts is if your website is only a blog and that should be the only focus of the home page.
Option 10: If you select a static page then you get to choose which page of your website should be the home page and which one the posts page. The page you choose as the homepage will lose the ability to control the permalink structure. Instead, it will become the top level page of your website (the page that shows when someone types in yourdomain.com or user.wphubsite.com). The blog post page will show up as a page on your website but you can’t control it like a normal page. It must be configured in the WordPress customizer or by other more advanced methods which will be covered in another article.
Option 11: If you won’t want search engines to crawl and index your website, keep this box selected. This is not recommended, though, because no page on your website will be indexable by search engines.
It’s highly recommended that you allow your website to be indexed therefore unselecting this box.
Step 12: Click the Save Changes button when you’ve set everything how you’d like it. If you don’t click this button then all your changes will be lost.
WPHubSite WordPress Discussion Settings
These settings control how commenting works on your blog. If you aren’t going to use the blog you don’t need to worry about these settings. If you are using the blog then we recommend using these settings. You are, of course, welcome to use any settings you’d like.
Step 13: Click the Discussion link in settings.
Option 14: You should always disable link notifications from other blogs. If you turn this setting on then your blog posts will likely become full of spam from other blogs that “link” to yours but are really just spam. Unselecting this option will prevent these from showing up and will keep your comments clean and understandable for your real users.
Option 15: Choose your preference for this one, it’s entirely up to you. If you allow comments then a comments section will show up at the bottom of all your blog posts.
Option 16: It’s a good idea to have commenters identity who they are. There’s not many good reasons for unselecting this option.
Option 17: This one is entirely up to you. If you find that you receive a lot of comment spam then select this option. HubSpot had a similar setting set up on their blog posts before they did away with all blog comments. They have an extremely high volume blog, though.
Option 18: This is preference but we prefer showing the newest comments at the top of the page. When someone visits your blog and reviews the comments it’s nice that they see more relevant comments first. It also has the affect of making your blog posts look more active.
Option 19: If you’d like to cut off spam before it happens, this is a great setting to select. Before any comment from a new commenter is posted on your blog posts, you must approve it. Once someone is trusted and you’ve approved their comment, they’re free to comment without approval on any other blog post.
Option 20: Spammers like to put links in their comment (but not always!) so it’s a good idea to hold comments for approval if there are 2 ore more links. This won’t prevent some spam but it will prevent some.
Option 21: WordPress will always use an image of the user if they have a Gravatar attributed to their email address. If not, your choice of one of these images will show as an avatar filler. You can also turn of avatars completely just above this setting.
Step 22: Save your changes by clicking the Save Changes button.
WPHubSite WordPress Media Settings
It’s not often that you’d need to change these settings but they’re available for you to change if you’d like. These default image sizes are used in various parts of WordPress and you’ll see them referenced often.
It’s a good idea to make sure these settings are what you want before uploading any images or customize your WordPress website. If you change them after you’ve uploaded images then all the thumbnails, medium sizes, and large sizes must be reprocessed which you must contact us for.
Step 23: Click the Media link in WordPress settings.
Option 24: You can choose a different size for thumbnail images which are used throughout your website. When you upload a new image to WordPress it will automatically create a new image exactly this size. The thumbnail is useful and will decrease the size of your page when a large image isn’t needed. It’s a good idea to keep this as is but you may have unique needs.
Option 25: This is the default setting and will crop your images to a perfect square if left selected. Otherwise your thumbnails may end up looking odd. If you change this setting, test putting a thumbnail in a page before you start uploading all your images.
Option 26: This option sets how large an image is by width and height. It wouldn’t hurt to set this a bit higher but the default is also quite sufficient most times.
Option 27: This will set the large size of any image uploaded too WordPress. If an image is uploaded that isn’t big enough then WordPress won’t even make a large version.
Step 28: Click the Save Change button before doing anything else or you’ll lose all your changes.
WPHubSite WordPress Permalink Settings
This setting is essential to update before you start working on your website too much. It’s especially important to get this right before submitting your website to search engines. If you submit your website to search engines before changing this then that will cause a lot of issues with dead links.
Step 29: Click the Permalinks link in the WordPress admin dashboard.
Option 30: You can choose how blog post URLs on your website display. They can contain day and name, month and name, or any other combination of information. You can even set a completely custom structure of your choosing. There’s almost no reason to select a custom structure or anything else besides post name, though. Our recommendation is to select post name and stick with that. It will keep your page URLs clean and simple as long as you keep clean and simple URL slugs. This is covered in the creating a page and creating a blog post help article.
Option 31: Unless you have a specific reason for changing either of these, don’t. Blank is the best option unless you have a specific reason for creating a longer and more complex category and tag URL.
Step 32: Click the Save Changes button to save any change you’ve made. This settings page should only be visited one time. Once set, leave these settings alone because changing them later could wreak havoc on your websites’ search engine optimization.
That’s it! You’ve been through all 32 options/steps to update all your general WordPress settings. This will ensure your website functions well and is set up exactly as you’d like it in order to maximize your convenience and your user’s engagement.
Update WordPress Settings Video
This video covers most of the topics above but in a more abbreviated form. There’s no detailed description of each option in all settings menus.