WordPress settings is the first step need to be done after installing WordPress in your own online business website, after having this step done, you can follow-up with website creation.
WordPress is the best website builder used by millions of websites all over the globe. It’s free, easy to install –as explained in our detail complete guide-, easy to use, and easy website builder. No tech or coding knowledge needed, it’s user friendly and anyone can create a website using WordPress.
In this guide, we’re going to show you step-by-step how to configure your WordPress settings, and get your website ready for the next.
What Is WordPress
In case you don’t know what WordPress is, we’re going to give you a short description just to make sure you follow the guide and have all information in your hand. WordPress is a CMS (content management system), used to build and create websites. It’s free, powerful software, created for non-technical people, to allow to anyone to use it and create websites.
WordPress is modular, it’s architecture system allow it to use plugins, to add features and options to the website. Adding a Theme after having finished WordPress settings, this allow you to create any kind of website. One-Pager, Blog, Business, Portfolio, e-Commerce store, Video multimedia and much more. It’s customizable and easy to design.
What Do You Need First
Before to configure WordPress settings, you need to install WordPress first. To do so, follow our complete guide and learn how to do it with only few easy steps. And before to install WordPress, you need to have some configurations done.
All details about what you need before to install WordPress is detailed in our full guide, but in this post, we are going to give you an overview and short explanation about what you need first.
– Register A Domain Name
Having a domain name is needed to make your website reachable from anywhere on the internet. It’s an easy process and it takes only few steps to register your own domain name. If you already have a domain name, go ahead and complete this guide, if no, open the links below and learn about domain names and how to register.
- Hoe to choose the best domain name for your online business
- How to register your domain name for your online business
– Create A Web Hosting Account
Create your web hosting account with the best providers, this will allow you to host your website and get it accessible all over the globe. Web hosting is a service provided by companies to host websites. To learn more about web hosting, how to choose the best provider and create your account, check our complete guides below.
- All you need to know about the best web hosting services
- How to setup your own website on the best website hosting providers
– Install WordPress
The best WordPress web hosting providers like TMDHosting and SiteGround have WordPress pre-built and ready to be installed. To install WordPress, open your cPanel account, and install WordPress following our complete guide below.
– Access WordPress Dashboard
After installing WordPress, access your website dashboard by adding the wp-admin keyword at the end of your website URL. Example, www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin.
A new window open, enter your username/email and password, and click “Log In”. The credentials to enter here, are those you created in the WordPress installation. Make sure to keep this credentials confidential.
Your WordPress dashboard for your website should open and looks like the image below.
WordPress Dashboard Overview
WordPress dashboard is the main page where you spend most of the time when creating your website. To get familiar with WordPress dashboard, we’ll take you through the menu in the left to explain them one by one, we’ll give you an overview about the dashboard menu. In our WordPress category in this website, you will find a lot of guides explaining each step of the dashboard and much more.
In the main page of the WordPress dashboard, you will find some quick views to have an idea about how your website is performing. “Site Health Status” and “Quick Draft” are once of many, each one has its meaning and show a specific information.
More you add plugins, and more views will be added. Some of them are important like Elementor and OceanWP theme, but some are not. To view or hide them, click “Screen Options” to show up the header –which is hidden by default– the “Screen elements” will appear, check the element you want to see, and uncheck the once you want to hide from the dashboard.
WordPress Dashboard Menu
From the menu in the left on WordPress dashboard, there is only some default information when you install WordPress the first time, more you add plugins and more the menu get bigger. In my case below, I have the default menu, as well as Elementor and OceanWP theme, because I already added the best website builder and the best theme.
It this guide, we are going to give you an overview about each menu, in this website, you’ll find a lot of free guides with more details.
– Posts Menu
Posts menu is where you can create your posts like this guide you are reading now. Posts can also be called Articles or Guides. By clicking “Posts”, you’ll access a posts dashboard where you can create your posts, by adding the post title, text, images, links, keywords for SEO, and more. Depend on the theme you are using, some may have more features than others, like the side bars, categories and more.
– Media Menu
Media menu is the place where you save all your website images, videos, files and audio. When you click Media, you get access to the dashboard where you can load all your multimedia. When you create your posts, add images from the media you already uploaded.
– Pages Menu
Pages menu is where you create your website pages. When you access a website on the internet, you navigate from a page to another, like “Home” page, “About” page, “Contact” page, “Services” page, and so on. All pages will be created in this menu.
– Comments Menu
Comments menu is where you find all comments added in your website by readers. If someone comment your posts, you’ll find it in this menu. This is true in case you have a blog and you allowed comments.
– Templates Menu
Templates menu is where you can create templates, like “Landing page” for example, a “Popup” and so on. Creating templates allows you to use that pages many time, without the need to recreate them each time.
– Appearance Menu
Appearance menu is where you find elements for your website appearance. Like Themes, Widgets, Menus, Header and so on. To customize your website for example, you need to download your Theme, we recommend using OceanWP one of the best themes in the market.
You also need to configure your Widgets, as well as creating your headers menus. Overall, if you need to do customizations, this is the place where to go. More detailed information about these configurations will be found in our WordPress category.
– Plugins Menu
Plugins menu is where you download your plugins. Plugins are small programs designed to do a specific function. For example, Elementor is the main plugin which is website builder. WooCommerce plugin allows you to add products and make your website become an e-Commerce store.
A lot of plugins exist in the market, they help you making your website fully functioning, from adding contact forms to adding video portfolio, there is always a plugin for each feature. Some are free and some are paid, most of them have a free and paid versions, with more features in the pro plans.
– Users Menu
Users menu is where you can add user accounts. Here where you create the username and giving the right access level. The default user registration is “Subscriber”, this type of user have access to the dashboard and can see only their own personal information like name and address, payment information like credit cards, and the purchases made on the website.
In this menu, you can create new users and give them high level. If you are working with writers for your blog, you may need to create an account with an “Author” role. If you need any help from a developer, you may need to create an account with an “Administrator” role. The administrator role is the highest access level and can do everything in the WordPress dashboard.
– Tools Menu
Tools menu has some tools you can use to manage your WordPress. By default, in the first WordPress installation, you are not going to find a lot of tools, only import and export some information. When you add new plugins, some tool will be added to this menu.
– Settings Menu
The Settings menu is where there is the most WordPress configurations. When you install WordPress the first time, you need to open the settings menu and do some changes.
The general sub-menu is where you setup the website basic information like language, time zone and so on. Because there is a lot of information in the settings menu, the rest of the list will be discussed separately in the next section.
WordPress Settings Menu
As soon as you install WordPress and access your dashboard, you can start building your website, add pages, posts, products and so on. But, before to do that, you need to configure WordPress settings in the dashboard. We’ll dig deeper into the WordPress settings menu and explain each menu and when you need to click it.
– General Settings
By clicking the “Settings” menu, the “General” tab will open, here you setup the general settings like website title, where you can add your website name, this will be shown when someone put the mouse on the browser tab, your website title will be shown there. The admin email account, where you define the email account you use to manage your WordPress dashboard. Configure the time zone. At the end the date and time format, the date can be y/m/d, m/d/y ..etc, and the time can be AM, pm, 24h and so on. Don’t forget to always click the Save button.
– Writing Settings
In the “Writing” sub-menu, usually we keep the default information. Here you define the default category and post format, as well as the SMTP configuration.
– Reading Settings
The “Reading” tab will allow you to define statically the home page and the post page. The home page will the page which open first when people open your website, and the post page will be used by WordPress to populate and list all your posts automatically in this page. Usually, the home page’s name is “Home”, and the post page’s name is “Posts”. The rest of setting we usually keep them in the default configuration.
– Discussion Settings
In the Discussion sub-menu, you have many option to define the comments behavior. If you allow comments on your site or not, to let readers leave messages in your posts. Comments are the best way to keep your readers interacting with your posts, and get feedback from them, this will allow you to have an idea if your posts are doing well, or you need to improve it. We highly recommend allowing comments in your website.
Other configurations can also be done in this sub-menu, allowing readers to comment without being connected or they should have an account and logged in, for how many time you want to keep the comments in your website, and so on.
– Media Settings
The media settings allows you to define the image size, usually we keep the default information here and nothing to do in this sub-menu, except if your theme has a specific image sizes and you really need to change them, but all known and good themes should not have issue with that, and the default configuration work just fine.
– Permalink Settings
The permalink settings allow you to define how your pages, posts and all links appear. By default, the value is “Day and name”, but more often we change it to “Post name”. This will make your pages and posts having the same name as a URL link, which make your website management easy.
– Privacy Settings
The last sub-menu in the “WordPress Settings” menu is “Privacy”, this allows you to define the Privacy Policy page, which is one of your legal pages in your website, this page will dictate how your website handle personal information of your website visitors, these legal page as well as the Terms and Conditions are very important and have to be added to your website. Check our WordPress category to find more information about the legal pages.
WordPress Theme Installation
After having installed WordPress and completed the WordPress settings, the next step is to install your theme. There is hundreds of themes available, however, not all have the right features and can work perfectly without any issues. Some are well designed and can be used for any kind of website, and some are poorly designed and are to avoid. Some are free, and others are paid, and most of them have the free and the paid version.
We highly recommend using OceanWP, is very stable and never get issues, it can be used for any kind of website, it has very good designs and a lot of demos to choose from, it has the free and paid version. Even with the free version you will have a great website and nice features. OceanWP is still the best after many years of existence. Check our WordPress category for more info about Theme installation and configuration.
Plugins Installation
Plugins are small programs designed and created to do a specific option, there is a huge number of plugins in the market, for each option you are looking to add to your website, there is always a plugin for that option, just research and you may find more than one.
Rank Math for example is the best SEO ever, this plugin will allow you to rank in the first page in google, which let your website get more visitor. More traffic to your website, means more money for your business. We highly recommend getting the paid version of Rank Math, since the price is very affordable comparing with the value you will get from it.
Other examples about some best plugins you may add to your website, and we highly recommend. Elementor which is the best website builder, The Smart Quiz Builder allows you to create quizzes in your website to get more engaging visitors. The amazing Spin Rewriter will help you create and generate blog posts in just few seconds, and much more. This will add a lot of high quality content which bring a lot of traffic to your website.
Tons of plugins exist, and each one allow you to do some specific things. A lot of them are free and others are paid version. Most of them have a free and paid version with more features.
However, be careful when choosing the plugin to use in your website, some free once are designed to hack people, for this security reason, we always go with the paid versions, except for the most trusted and well known plugins. By doing so, you are protected, and you deal with a real business and not hackers.
Adding Pages and Posts
The “Home” page is the first page you see when you access any website, other pages like “Contact”, “About”, “Services”, “Blog” and “Shop”, are all different pages you may need to create for your website.
Some of them are mandatory for your website to work, like the home page, others are optional depend on the website type. Whether is business website, Blog website or e-Commerce website, each type need different pages and options.
The Blog website for example need a lot of content, posts, articles and guides. Like the one you are reading now. The posts are needed for business and e-Commerce websites as well since they bring traffic to your website. If you are looking to bring traffic to your website by adding a lot of posts easily, use the Spin Rewriter which allows you to create many posts in few seconds.
Final Thoughts
WordPress is one of the most popular and the best website builder. It’s used by millions of websites in the world, designed to be used by people without techie knowledge or a degree.
Create your own website using WordPress is become easy, and configure WordPress settings is the easiest. Just follow this step-by-step guide as well as our guides in this website to get your website up and running in no time.
In this guide, we explained you what WordPress is and how to configure WordPress settings. We have a full WordPress category with many completed guides about WordPress, check them out and learn more about themes, plugins, pages, posts, blog, design and much more.
We hope this guide will help you create your own website and configure your WordPress settings, whether is one pager website, business, Blog or e-Commerce store. WordPress settings are almost the same for all website types.
What about you, did you have your website, did you create your website using WordPress or other builder ? are you able to configure your WordPress settings ? please share your experience with our community by leaving a comment below.
