Welcome back to WordPress Wednesday where we share a quick tip to help you get the most from your WordPress powered site. Click here to view all the posts in this series.

Today you’ll learn how to customize your general settings. These settings are pretty easy to understand.

You can access the General Settings by clicking Settings in your admin area sidebar. Underneath, another menu appears where you can click General.

You’ll want to make sure the Site Title and Tagline fields are completed. Unless you have an image header, whatever you fill in here is what will appear on your blog. If you have an image header, I’d recommend filling these fields in anyway as search engines will often “see” these items even if they aren’t visible on your site.

Typically, WordPress address (URL) and Site address (URL) will already have the correct URLs filled in. Do not change these unless you know what you’re doing. Changing them incorrectly could break your site.

Email address – this is used for sending you various updates regarding the site, like user registration notices.

Membership – I’d highly recommend leaving this unchecked unless you have a good reason for allowing memberships. If you’re not running a membership site, there’s next to no reason for allowing members, and hackers love to exploit open membership settings.

New User Default Role – If you have unchecked the membership box, set this to Subscriber. That role has the fewest permissions. If you have a membership site, you’ll need to decided what default role you want members to have.

Timezone – I’d recommend setting this so that scheduled posts will actually go live when you intend. Click the dropdown and choose a city in your time zone. Then daylight savings time will automatically be taken into account.

The remaining settings can be set according to your personal preferences.

If you can’t figure it out or don’t want to bother…

you can have us customize your WordPress settings for you. Go to our Services page and look for 1/2 hour of maintenance. This will allow us time to customize all of your settings to your desired specifications.

What do you think? Please feel free to leave a comment or contact us with your feedback or questions. We love hearing how we have helped people and how we can improve to help you better.

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Category: Tips and Tricks, WordPress Wednesday