WordPress Writing Settings Usage Guide & Tutorial

Usage guide and tutorial to learn how to set up, configure and edit the WordPress website writing settings in a simple and effective method

Updated on April 11, 2024
WordPress Writing Settings Usage Guide & Tutorial

Usage guide and tutorial to learn how to set up, configure and edit the WordPress website writing settings.

How To Use WordPress Writing Settings?

  1. Login to your WordPress dashboard: Enter your login credentials and access the backend of your WordPress website.
  2. Navigate to the Writing Settings: In the left-hand sidebar, click “Settings” and select “Writing” from the dropdown menu. This will take you to the Writing Settings page.
  3. Configure the Default Post Category: Choose the default category for your new posts. This helps organize your content and makes it easier for readers to navigate your site.
  4. Set the Default Post Format: Decide on the default post format for your articles. WordPress offers standard, gallery, video, audio, and more formats. Select the layout that best suits your content style.
  5. Customize the Post via Email Settings (optional): WordPress lets you publish posts directly via email. If you plan to use this feature, configure the necessary email settings. Including the email address, server details, and authentication method.
  6. Enable or Disable the Update Services: Update Services automatically notify various search engines and blog directories whenever you publish new content. By default, WordPress comes with a list of updated services. You can add or remove services as needed.
  7. Configure the Remote Publishing Settings (optional): If you intend to publish posts using remote publishing applications or services. Such as desktop publishing software or mobile apps. You can set up the necessary protocols and credentials here.
  8. Customize the Formatting Options: In this section, you can choose how WordPress handles certain aspects of text formatting, such as converting emoticons into graphics, automatically linking to URLs, or formatting the text upon pasting.
  9. Save your changes: Once you have configured the desired settings. Click the “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page to apply the modifications.

WordPress Writing Settings Usage Guide & Tutorial

WordPress Writing Settings

The WordPress writing settings configure various options for your site content. Settings include defining the Default Post Category, Default Post Format (if supported by your Theme), and the Default Link Category if the Link Manager plugin is installed.

Use the Settings Writing Screen to control your interface when writing new posts. These settings control WordPress’s features in adding and editing posts, Pages, Post Types, and optional functions like Remote Publishing, posting via e-mail, and Update Services.

Formatting: You can use these checkboxes to control some of your blog’s design.

  • Convert emoticons such as 🙂 and 😛 to graphics on display – Checking this tells WordPress to convert all of the emoticons in your posts into graphical smilies. For more information on this feature, see Using Smilies.
  • WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically – Checking this helps make sure that what you write in your posts is a valid XHTML code. You should probably check this box since invalid code sometimes causes problems with web browsers. Note: some Plugins may not work correctly when this feature is turned on.

Default Post Category

The Category you select from this drop-down is called the default post Category. The default post Category is assigned to a post if you fail to give any other Categories with writing your posts.

If you delete a Category, the posts in that category will be assigned the default post Category. If you have several Categories, but use one of those Categories more frequently, select that Category here to make your life a little easier. Usage guide and tutorial to learn how to set up, configure and edit the WordPress website writing settings in a simple and effective method.

Default Post Format

The Post Format you select from this drop-down is the default Post Format. Themes use Post Formats to create different styling for different posts.

This setting is only visible if the current activated theme supports Post Formats. The WordPress Twenty Seventeen theme is an example of an article that promotes various Post Formats, including Standard (no particular format), Aside, and Gallery.

WordPress Writing Settings: Press This

Press This is a bookmarklet: a little app that runs in your browser and lets you grab bits of the web.
Press This to clip text, images, and videos from any web page. Then edit and add more straight from Press This before you save or publish it in a post on your site.

Drag-and-drop the following link to your bookmarks bar or right-click it and add it to your favorites for a posting shortcut.

Post via e-mail

With this option, you can set up your blog to publish e-mails as blog posts. To do this, you would e-mail a specific address you’ve established. You will likely need the help of your web host and/or your e-mail provider.

This feature is 100% optional; you can still publish posts from the Posts Add New Screen if you don’t want to post via e-mail. The Blog by Email article describes this feature in greater detail.

These messages are displayed at the beginning of this section: “To post to WordPress by e-mail, you must set up a secret e-mail account with POP3 access. Any mail received at this address will be posted, so keeping this address very secret is a good idea. You could use three random strings: ” FKZXx8EK, P6snQ5Lq, YcrfBw03.”

Complete the following fields to post by e-mail:

Mail Server: A mail server receives e-mails on your behalf and stores them for retrieval. Your mail server will have a URI address, such as mail.example.com, which you should enter here.

Port: Servers usually use port 110 to receive requests related to emails. Enter that port number here if your mail server uses a different port.

Login Name: If, for example, the e-mail address that you will be using for the writing by e-mail feature is wordpress@example.com, then ‘WordPress’ is the Login name.

Password: Enter the password for the above e-mail address here. WordPress displays three possible passwords in the introduction section of this Screen.

Default Mail Category: WordPress will assign this Category to all posts published via the Post by e-mail feature. Note: You can create new Categories in Administration > Posts > Categories.

Update Services

When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the updated services of the sites listed in the box. For more about this, see Update Services on the Codex. When entering services, separate multiple URIs with line breaks.

If your Privacy Settings Blog Visibility is set to “I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors,” the message “WordPress is not notifying any Update Services because of your blog’s privacy settings” is displayed.

Saving WordPress Writing Settings

Click the Save Changes button to ensure any changes you have made to your Settings keeps on your database. Once you click the button, a confirmation text box will appear at the top of the page, telling you your settings have been saved.

Video Tutorial

WordPress Writing Settings by Visualmodo

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