How to Maximize WordPress Settings without Losing Your Mind

In the previous article, Linda wrote about how to upload and upgrade WordPress. In this article, she'll show you how to create settings for WordPress – one time operations and other tips that can help save your sanity.

Discussion Settings

Depending upon your need for guarding your content, you can alter any choices shown below to either open your blog to all sorts of comments and spam or close it to moderate any attempted comments.

1.Default Article Settings: Even if the first box slows down posting (and I've never noticed any "slow down" whatsoever), I click on that box. I want other bloggers and Web page authors to know when I've mentioned their content, and the first box does that job automatically. You also can allow pingbacks to your site (some are worth publishing) and you can moderate those pingbacks through the options shown below.

2.Other Comment Settings: Note the second box – if you do not allow users to register, you cannot use this option. Instead, comments can come from anywhere, but you can moderate them in the last section in the Discussion Settings shown above. You also can choose to nest threads, close comments after a certain number of days (I've discovered that, unless the article is gathering some hate comments, there is no need to close a blog entry comment possibility...some commenters can keep a conversation going for months, allowing that page to gain ranking in search engines), and alter which comments show first.

3.I usually want to know when a comment is posted or held for moderation. The alert will come to the email you listed on the General Settings page.

4.If you check these two boxes, a note that any comments will be held for moderation usually shows on your WP site. This note may not show, depending upon your theme choice. If it doesn't show, you may need to create one so your commenters do not continuously click on the "post comment" button. In that case, you'll begin to receive numerous alerts that the same person is adding the same comment over and over.

But, wait! There's more. Scroll down the Discussion Settings page to see this:

In the next section, you can add words that will hold a comment in moderation or that will throw the comment into your spam box. For instance, I don't want any comment that includes the word "viagra" or "Viagra" with a capital "V". So, I've added both words to my blacklist box. Any time you begin to receive comment spam with certain words, you can add them to that box and WP will throw any comments containing those words directly into spam.

Wait! There's more...scroll down to take a look at the Avatar section in the Discussion Settings:

The avatar section is fairly self-explanatory. However, you may note that if you have an avatar that you use with a specific email address, that is the avatar that will show on your Web site when you create articles or comment to comments. You can alter this option by not allowing avatars to show at all. The only reason to show avatars is to 1) create a sense of community or 2) if your site is not conducive to community-building, then showing avatars will attract comments from egoistic trolls. If the latter is OK by you, then go for it.

Now, go to the Media link under the Settings tab...