WordPress Settings

Whenever I am going to use WordPress as a CMS, there are always a few settings I update right off the bat. You can get to the settings by logging into the WordPress admin site with the admin username and password you set up when you installed WordPress. Be sure you are using your WordPress admin username and password, not the u/p for your WordPress database.

You can access your WordPress admin by going to http://www.yoururl.com/wp-login.php .

Once you are logged in you see a nice dashboard with some menus on the left. We are going to start with the settings menu, which is all the way on the bottom. As you update each section be sure to hit the ‘Save Changes’ button on the bottom of the page. 

Settings->General

There is nothing too pressing to update on this page. Feel free to tweak these settings as you like.

Settings->Reading

Update the front page display to ‘A static page’ and select the about page, which came with your intallation. Later on you can edit this page.

Settings->Discussion

I usually uncheck the first 3 boxes, which are usually checked by default.

Settings->Permalinks

I use a custom structure, with the value of ‘/%category%/%postname%/’.

That is actually enough to get you started. my next couple of pages discuss editing templates to make things look less like a blog, and more like a standard site.