The Essential WordPress Settings for a New Site

A fresh WordPress installation comes with default settings that work for basic blogs but fall short for professional publisher websites. Understanding which settings to change—and which to leave alone—can save hours of troubleshooting later. This comprehensive guide walks through every essential setting in the WordPress admin panel, explaining not just what to change but why each configuration matters for performance, SEO, and user experience.

I. General Settings: Foundation Configuration

The General Settings panel contains the most fundamental configurations for your WordPress site. Every option here affects how your site identifies itself to visitors and search engines. Getting these right from the start prevents confusion and potential SEO issues.

A. Site Title and Tagline

Your site title and tagline appear in browser tabs, search results, and various theme locations. Many site owners underestimate their importance for brand recognition and SEO.

• Site Title: Enter your brand name exactly as you want it displayed. For consistency, use the same capitalization everywhere. Keep it concise—under 60 characters works best for search result displays.
• Tagline: Write a brief description (under 160 characters) that explains what your site offers. This often appears in search results as your default meta description until you configure an SEO plugin.
• Avoid defaults: Remove "Just another WordPress site" immediately. Leaving default taglines signals an incomplete, unprofessional site to visitors and search engines.

B. WordPress Address and Site Address

These URL settings are critical and can lock you out of your site if configured incorrectly. Understanding the difference prevents common migration and SSL issues.

• WordPress Address (URL): The location where your WordPress core files are installed. Only change this if WordPress is in a subdirectory.
• Site Address (URL): The public URL visitors use to access your site. This may differ from the WordPress Address if you installed WordPress in a subdirectory.
• HTTPS consistency: Both URLs should use https:// if you have an SSL certificate. Mismatched protocols cause redirect loops and mixed content warnings.

C. Email and User Settings

Administrative email settings affect password resets, comment notifications, and core update alerts. Configure these carefully to ensure you receive important notifications.

• Administration Email: Use a monitored email address. This receives security notices, password reset links if you forget your password, and important WordPress updates.
• Membership checkbox: Leave "Anyone can register" unchecked for publisher sites. Open registration invites spam accounts unless you specifically need user submissions.
• New User Default Role: Keep as "Subscriber" if you ever enable registration. Never default new users to Administrator, Editor, or Author roles.

D. Timezone and Date Settings

Correct timezone settings ensure scheduled posts publish when expected and timestamps appear correctly to visitors.

• Timezone: Select your city from the dropdown rather than using UTC offsets. City-based timezones automatically handle daylight saving time changes.
• Date Format: Choose a format appropriate for your audience. US readers expect MM/DD/YYYY while European audiences prefer DD/MM/YYYY.
• Week Starts On: Match your target audience's convention. Sunday start is common in the US; Monday start is standard in most other countries.

II. Writing Settings: Content Defaults

Writing settings control default behaviors when creating content. Most defaults work well, but a few adjustments optimize your editorial workflow.

A. Default Categories and Formats

• Default Post Category: Create a "General" or "Uncategorized" category for posts that do not fit elsewhere. Never leave posts truly uncategorized as it looks unprofessional.
• Default Post Format: Keep as "Standard" unless you plan extensive use of post formats. Most publisher sites only use standard articles.
• Post via email: Leave disabled unless you have a specific use case. This feature has security implications and is rarely needed for modern sites.

B. Update Services

WordPress can ping update services when you publish new content, helping search engines discover your posts faster.

• Default service: The default XML-RPC ping service (rpc.pingomatic.com) is sufficient for most sites.
• Additional services: Adding more ping services provides diminishing returns. Search engines use sitemaps and crawling, not ping services, for most discovery.

III. Reading Settings: Homepage and Visibility

Reading settings control what visitors see first and whether search engines can index your site. These settings profoundly affect SEO and user experience.

A. Homepage Display

The homepage display option determines whether your front page shows latest posts or a static page. Choose based on your content strategy.

• Latest posts: Best for blogs where new content is the primary draw. Visitors immediately see fresh articles.
• Static page: Better for business sites where you control the first impression. Create a dedicated homepage with featured content sections.
• Posts page: If using a static homepage, designate a separate page (like /blog/) to display your latest posts.

B. Posts Per Page

The posts per page setting affects load times, user engagement, and how much scrolling visitors must do.

• Recommended range: Between 5 and 10 posts provides a good balance. Too few requires excessive pagination; too many slows page loads.
• Consider images: If your theme displays large featured images, fewer posts per page improves performance.
• RSS feed setting: The syndication feed count can differ from blog display. RSS readers often prefer more items (10-15) per feed.

C. Search Engine Visibility

This checkbox is the most critical setting for new sites. Incorrect configuration can prevent your site from appearing in search results.

• During development: Check "Discourage search engines" to prevent indexing of incomplete content. This adds a noindex meta tag and modifies robots.txt.
• At launch: Uncheck this setting when your site is ready. Forgetting to uncheck it is a common reason sites never appear in Google.
• How to verify: After unchecking, visit yoursite.com/robots.txt to confirm it no longer contains "Disallow: /"

IV. Permalinks: URL Structure

Permalink structure determines your page URLs. This setting has major SEO implications and should be configured before publishing any content. Changing permalinks later breaks existing links.

A. Choosing the Right Structure

• Post name (recommended): URLs like /your-post-title/ are clean, readable, and SEO-friendly. This is the best choice for most sites.
• Day and name: Adds date to URLs. Useful for news sites where publication date matters. URLs look like /2024/12/21/post-title/
• Category and name: Includes category in URL (/category/post-title/). Provides context but creates longer URLs and complicates category changes.
• Avoid numeric: Plain numeric URLs (?p=123) provide no SEO benefit and are difficult for humans to understand or remember.

B. Category and Tag Base

The optional base settings let you customize how category and tag archive URLs appear.

• Category base: Default is /category/. You can change to /topics/ or leave empty to remove the base entirely.
• Tag base: Default is /tag/. Consider your taxonomy strategy before changing these settings.
• Empty base considerations: Removing category base can cause conflicts with page slugs. Only remove if you understand the implications.

V. Discussion Settings: Comments and Engagement

Discussion settings balance user engagement against spam. The defaults lean toward open engagement, which works poorly for sites that attract spam attention.

A. Default Article Settings

• Pingbacks and trackbacks: Disable both options. These legacy features generate more spam than legitimate engagement.
• Allow comments: Enable globally but consider disabling on a per-post basis for informational content that does not benefit from discussion.
• Comment nesting: 2-3 levels of replies works well. Deeper nesting becomes visually confusing on mobile devices.

B. Comment Moderation

Moderation settings prevent spam and abusive comments from appearing on your site. Configure these based on your capacity to review comments.

• Comment must be approved: Enable "Comment author must have a previously approved comment" to build a whitelist of trusted commenters.
• Held for moderation: Add common spam triggers to the moderation list. Include terms like "casino", "loan", "pharmacy" and excessive links.
• Comment blacklist: Add persistent spam sources to the disallowed list. Comments matching these patterns are automatically trashed.

C. Avatar Settings

Avatars add personality to comments but have privacy and performance implications.

• Show avatars: Enable for community feel but consider GDPR implications. Gravatar sends email hashes to external servers.
• Default avatar: Choose a branded fallback for commenters without Gravatars. Mystery Man or custom images work well.
• Maximum rating: Keep at G for publisher sites. Higher ratings may display inappropriate user-uploaded avatars.

VI. Media Settings: Image Configuration

Media settings control how WordPress handles uploaded images. Proper configuration saves storage space and improves page load times.

A. Image Sizes

WordPress generates multiple sizes for each uploaded image. Understanding these prevents layout issues and storage bloat.

• Thumbnail size: Used in admin listings and some widgets. 150x150 pixels is sufficient for most uses.
• Medium size: 300x300 default works for most themes. Consider your theme's content width when adjusting.
• Large size: Match your content column width. For an 800px content area, 800px works well. Larger creates unnecessary file sizes.
• Hard crop vs. soft crop: Thumbnails use hard crop (exact dimensions) by default. Medium and large use soft crop (proportional scaling).

B. Upload Organization

• Year/month folders: Keep "Organize uploads into month and year-based folders" checked. This prevents directories with thousands of files, which slows server performance.

VII. Post-Configuration Verification

After configuring all settings, verify everything works correctly before publishing content.

• Create test post: Publish a test post and verify the permalink matches your chosen structure.
• Check timezone: Create a scheduled post and verify it publishes at the expected time.
• Test comments: Leave a test comment (from a logged-out browser) to verify moderation settings work correctly.
• Verify categories: Check that your default category applies correctly to new posts.
• Upload test image: Upload an image and verify all size variations generate correctly.

VIII. Conclusion

Properly configured WordPress settings provide a solid foundation for content creation and site growth. The most critical settings—permalinks, search engine visibility, and discussion controls—deserve immediate attention. Other settings can be fine-tuned as you develop your editorial workflow. Return to these settings periodically to ensure they still match your evolving content strategy.

Which WordPress setting gave you the most trouble? Share your configuration tips in the comments below!