First Things First: General Settings & Permalinks

A quick checklist of what to change right after installing WordPress (no mistakes).

So you’ve just installed WordPress – congratulations! If you followed the previous guide (or used a one-click installer), you’re now looking at a fresh WordPress dashboard.

It probably looks something like this:

  • A default theme (Twenty Twenty-Five or similar)
  • A sample post called “Hello world!”
  • A sample page called “Sample Page”
  • And a bunch of default settings

Now comes the important part: configuring WordPress properly before you start building.

In this article, I’ll walk you through the most critical settings – the ones I wish I had set correctly from day one. Most of these live under Settings in your WordPress admin sidebar.

Let’s dive in.

1. General Settings (Settings → General)

This is where your site’s basic identity lives. Go to Settings → General.

Site Title & Tagline

  • Site Title – your website’s name (e.g., “EasyWPKit” or your blog name).
  • Tagline – a short description (e.g., “WordPress tutorials & plugins”). It appears in browser tabs and search results.

💡 Tip: Don’t overthink it – you can change both later.

WordPress Address (URL) & Site Address (URL)

  • These should already be correct. Usually both are your domain (e.g., https://yourdomain.com). If you installed WordPress in a subfolder (like yourdomain.com/wordpress), the first one would include that subfolder while the second stays root. Leave them as is unless you know what you’re doing.

Administrator Email

  • This is the email where WordPress sends notifications (password resets, comments, updates). Make sure it’s a real email you check regularly.

Membership & New User Default Role

  • Membership – check “Anyone can register” if you plan to allow user registration (for a community, shop, or membership site). I keep it unchecked until I’m ready.
  • New User Default Role – if you enable registration, set this to “Subscriber” by default. Subscribers can only manage their profile – they can’t edit your site.

Timezone, Date & Time Format

  • Timezone – choose your city (e.g., “Los Angeles” or “London”). This affects scheduled posts and timestamps.
  • Date & Time format – pick what looks good to you (I use “F j, Y” for dates – e.g., April 19, 2026 – and “g:i a” for time – e.g., 4:30 pm).

Week Starts On

  • Set to “Monday” if your audience is international, or “Sunday” if US-focused. I use Monday.

Don’t forget to click “Save Changes” at the bottom of every settings page. This is easy to miss.

2. Writing Settings (Settings → Writing)

This section controls how content creation works.

Default Post Category

  • By default, new posts are assigned to “Uncategorized”. Create a new category first (say, “Blog” or “WordPress Zero to Hero”), then select it as default.

Default Post Format

  • Leave as “Standard” unless your theme supports other formats (like galleries or quotes).

Post via Email & Remote Publishing

  • Ignore these – 99% of users don’t need them.

Update Pressing: You can also configure an update service (ping list) to notify search engines when you publish. The default http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ is fine, but I recommend using an SEO plugin (like RankMath) for better control (I covered essential plugins in article #1).

3. Reading Settings (Settings → Reading)

This determines what visitors see when they land on your site.

Your homepage displays

  • Latest posts (default) – your blog feed will be the front page. Good for pure blogs.
  • A static page – choose a separate page as your homepage and another for your blog list. I recommend this for most sites. You’ll need to create two pages first: “Home” and “Blog”. Then select them here.

Blog pages show at most

  • How many posts appear per page. Start with 10.

Syndication feeds show the most recent

  • Leave at “Full text” unless you want only snippets (not recommended for SEO).

Search engine visibility

  • Discourage search engines from indexing this site – leave this unchecked unless you’re building in private. Unchecking tells Google to index your site.

⚙️ 4. Discussion Settings (Settings → Discussion)

This controls comments. Here’s how I set mine to avoid spam without losing engagement.

Default post settings

  • Uncheck “Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the post” (pingbacks often cause spam).
  • Uncheck “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks)” – same reason.
  • Keep “Allow people to submit comments on new posts” if you want comments.

Other comment settings

  • Comment author must fill out name and email – check this.
  • Users must be registered and logged in to comment – up to you. I leave unchecked for casual bloggers.
  • Automatically close comments on posts older than X days – I set to 14 days to avoid spam on old content.

Before a comment appears

  • Comment must be manually approved – check this. Prevents spam from appearing live.
  • Comment author must have a previously approved comment – check this too; it trusts returning visitors.

Comment Moderation

  • I set “Hold a comment in the queue if it contains more than 2 links” (spammy comments often have many links).

Avatars

  • You can enable or disable avatar images next to comments. I keep them on (default).

Save changes.

🔗 5. Permalinks (Settings → Permalinks) – Most important for SEO

This is the single most important setting for your site’s URLs. Don’t leave it on the default (which looks like ?p=123).

Scroll down and select “Post name” – it makes URLs clean and SEO-friendly:

  • Default (ugly): yoursite.com/?p=123
  • Post name (good): yoursite.com/sample-post/

Why it matters: Search engines (and humans) prefer readable URLs. It also helps your hosting performance (though minimally).

After selecting “Post name”, click “Save Changes”. Your server may need a few seconds to rewrite the rules.

6. Privacy Settings (Settings → Privacy)

WordPress requires you to choose a Privacy Policy page (due to GDPR and other laws). If you haven’t created one yet, the screen lets you generate a suggested policy or select an existing page.

I created a real Privacy Policy page earlier – you can follow this guide to write yours. Once it exists, select it here and save.

Bonus: Delete Sample Content

Before you start writing real content, clean up the defaults:

  1. Posts → All Posts – hover over “Hello world!” and click Trash.
  2. Pages → All Pages – trash “Sample Page”.
  3. Comments – delete the default test comment (if any).

This keeps your site clean and professional.

🗂️ Create Your First Categories

Go to Posts → Categories. Delete the default “Uncategorized” and create your own:

  • “WordPress Zero to Hero”
  • “Hosting & Performance”
  • “Plugins”
    (or anything relevant to your niche)

You’ll assign each future post to one of these.

What’s next?

Now your WordPress foundation is solid. The next step is making it look good:

👉 Next article: Choosing a Theme and Building a Homepage with Kadence (No Coding) – coming soon.

Have questions about any setting? Drop a comment. I’ve broken almost every default setting at some point – and learned from it.

First published: April 26, 2026
Last updated: April 26, 2026

📌 Key takeaways (for skimmers)

  • Set Site Title, Tagline, Timezone in General Settings.
  • Choose static homepage in Reading Settings.
  • Change Permalinks to “Post name” – crucial for SEO.
  • Configure comment moderation to avoid spam.
  • Delete sample content and create your own categories.

🔗 Internal links used in this article