After configuring the wordpress dashboard general tab, the next one is the writing tab. The writing tab sets the parameters for your “write a post” page where you enter the actual blog post information.
The options for this tab include the size of the post box ,convert emoticons to graphics for display, setting the default post category, post via email and update services.
This tutorial will focus on the size of the post box and update services
Note: throughout this article and this website, the term “Wordpress Tab” or “Tab” refers to the tabs within the wordpress architecture and not to be confused with the tabs within your Firefox browser.
Configure The Writing Tab
- Login to your Wordpress Dashboard, and click on the Options tab found in the light blue Wordpress navigation bar
- If this is a brand new install of Wordpress with no Plugins installed, there should be 7 subtabs as options
- Click on the “Writing” tab as shown in the image below
Size Of Post Box
You’ll see that I have “size of the post box” circled. The number you set here has an impact on how much room you have to write your blog post. By default, the number is 10 which refers to 10 rows of space for writing in.
Go have a look at this right now. Login to your wordpress blog, then click the “write a post” link from your dashboard (or click the “write” tab next to “dashboard”).
Make a note of the size of the “post” box under “title”. Not too big is it? If you haven’t already change this setting, it’s exactly 10 rows tall. Personally, I prefer it twice that size just so I can see more of my post without having to scroll through it while I’m editing it.
Now, go back to the “writing” tab by clicking on Options -> Writing and change this value to 20 so that it doubles the writing space available.
Once you’ve done that, we’ll skip over the blog by email part and straight down to the bottom, the “Update Services”
Update Services
You may or may not have heard about ping or pinging, but essentially it’s a way for to tell someone or a service that something has happened. Pinging can be used in various ways, but in this case it’s to tell some blog announcement services that “hey, I’ve got some new content, please update your catalog”.
A ping is just a little nudge saying, I’m here, and I’ve got something new. This is an over simplification, but you get the idea.
The “Update Services” is a list of places that accept pings from you so that they can alert their readers or update their lists and put a link to your new post on their website.
What happens is that you ping them, then they come to your website and see what’s new. Then they take the new title of your blog post and usually the first paragraph and update their websites with the new info. This then displays your latest work on their sites so that interested parties can come back to your site and read.
Pinging is a good thing.
Too much pinging can be a bad thing.
By default, this box has one entry in it.
Here are a few more entries that I use myself.
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
Copy and paste these items into your Update Services text field.
Keep in mind that whenever you publish a new post, part of what your web host is doing is then pinging these places. That takes time and server resources. It can slow things down just slightly, so you may notice a slight hesitation in response time. I know of places that give you huge lists of places to ping and then your website just times out when you hit publish. This is a stripped down version of that huge list that I find works.
You get to ping a bunch of places to announce your work, your blog post publishes in a timely manor, you get more traffic and everyone is happy.
Once you’ve configured this “writing” tab on your wordpress dashboard, press the update button. Then go have a look at your “write a post” page and see how the change looks.
Read the entire post: How To Configure The Wordpress Dashboard Writing Tab
from Rob
@ Blog Building Basics
- When you first create a blog, one of your first steps to complete before beginning any posting is to configure the various subtabs found under the Options tab in the Dashboard. This post focus’ on the “General tab” which shows up first in the list from left to right.
The general tab is where you configure your blog title, tagline, add the www to the domain name and set the blog timzone offset.
Note: throughout this article and this website, the term “Wordpress Tab” or “Tab” refers to the tabs within the wordpress architecture and not to be confused with the
- Wordpress should be the basis for your site if you intend to market your online business with Google Adsense. You can use Wordpress as a CMS, or Content Management System as well as a blogging platform. It's very simple to manage your content with Wordpress and you will be able to post your content rapidly with little effort. Using the familiar word processor format, the dashboard administrative panel in Wordpress assists you in easily managing and writing posts and pages. You can manage categor
- Thanks to the Download Squad for this great starter list of post install Wordpress To Do List.
Depending on how you’ve installed WordPress (manually or by a “one-click-install” that many hosting providers offer) - one of the very last installation steps is to choose a blog name and provide an email address. That’s where this checklist begins. Click on a heading below to get started!
Create blog title, add email address
Change your password
Disable visual rich editor
Add users
Change the tagline
Edit Membership permissions
Set a date and time format
Modify Reading and Writing settings
Edit Discussion settings
Modify Permalinks structure
Pick a theme
Customize your theme
Write down CSS info
Change title
- Properly tagging a WordPress blog will increase page rankings and traffic to your WordPress blog.
- Search engine optimisation for WordPress is essential if you are to gain maximum SEO traction from your efforts. However, what many people fail to understand is that the default installation of WordPress simply does not include even the most basic SEO functionality. Here are 10 Tips to fix the problem.
