Most people finish installing WordPress and immediately head for the theme library or start hunting for plugins. The dashboard is up, the site loads — it feels like the work has begun. And it has, but there are six settings screens worth going through before anything else. They take about ten minutes total and affect things that are genuinely hard to fix once content is live.
WordPress ships with defaults that make sense for a demo installation, not a real website. Permalink structure, reading settings, comment handling — each of these has a default that either slows your site down for SEO, creates spam problems, or simply does not reflect how a real site should behave. Getting through them at the start is one of the better habits you can build.
Quick Answer
After installing WordPress, go through these six settings screens in order: General (site title, timezone, admin email), Reading (front page and blog page assignments), Discussion (comment moderation), Permalinks (switch to Post name), Media (image sizes), and Privacy (privacy policy page). The most important change is switching your permalink structure to Post name before publishing anything.
Why This Matters
Several of these settings have a direct impact on SEO and site behaviour. Permalink structure in particular should be set before you publish a single post — changing it later requires redirects to avoid broken links across the entire site. Comment settings that allow open posting with no moderation will result in spam accumulating from the day the site goes public. Timezone errors cause posts to publish at wrong times and can break scheduled content workflows.
None of these are difficult to configure. They simply require knowing which screens to visit and what to look for.
Step-by-Step: The Six Settings Screens
1. General Settings
Go to Settings → General.
Check and update the following:
- Site Title — this appears in browser tabs, search results, and the WordPress header. Set it to your actual site name.
- Tagline — the default “Just another WordPress site” should be removed or replaced. Either enter a short, accurate description of what the site is, or leave the field blank. WordPress uses it in some theme headers and in the WebSite schema it generates.
- Administration Email Address — verify this is a real, monitored address. WordPress sends important notifications here including plugin update alerts and new user registrations.
- Timezone — set this to your actual location, not UTC. Leaving it on UTC causes posts to publish at unexpected times and creates confusion with scheduled content. This is the most commonly overlooked field on this screen.
- Date and Time Format — set whichever format suits your audience.
Leave WordPress Address and Site Address as they are unless you have a specific technical reason to change them. Modifying these incorrectly can lock you out of the admin area.
The WordPress General Settings documentation covers every field on this screen in full.
2. Reading Settings
Go to Settings → Reading.
By default, WordPress shows your latest posts on the front page. For most real websites, you want a static page as the homepage instead — a custom page you control rather than a live feed of posts. Change Your homepage displays to A static page, then assign your homepage and blog page.
If you have not created these pages yet, the process is straightforward — creating a homepage in WordPress and setting your blog page covers the full setup including how Reading Settings connects to what visitors actually see.
Also check Search engine visibility at the bottom of this screen. During development, this is sometimes ticked to block search engine indexing. Make sure it is unticked before launch.
3. Discussion Settings
Go to Settings → Discussion.
Comments are enabled by default on all new posts. For most new websites, this creates more problems than value — comment spam starts accumulating almost immediately once a site is indexed, and moderation takes time.
The practical starting configuration:
- Untick Allow people to submit comments on new posts if you do not want comments on the site at all.
- If you do want comments, enable Comment must be manually approved. This holds every comment in a moderation queue until you approve it.
- Enable Comment author must have a previously approved comment as an additional filter once you have some real commenters.
In my experience, disabling comments entirely is the right call for most new content sites. The engagement benefit rarely outweighs the spam management overhead until a site has a genuine regular audience.
4. Permalinks
Go to Settings → Permalinks.
This is the most important setting to change before publishing. WordPress defaults to a URL structure that looks like /?p=123 — a numeric ID with no readable content. Switch this to Post name, which produces clean URLs like /your-post-title/.
Post name URLs are readable, shareable, and better for SEO. The URL tells both the reader and search engines what the page is about before they visit it. If you change permalink structure after publishing, every existing URL changes — which means old links break and you need to set up redirects to preserve any traffic or ranking you have accumulated.
Set this to Post name now and do not change it again. If you later want a searchable XML sitemap, creating an XML sitemap in WordPress covers how to submit one to Google Search Console after your permalink structure is in place.
5. Media Settings
Go to Settings → Media.
You will see default dimensions for thumbnail, medium, and large image sizes. For most new sites, the defaults are fine to leave as they are. WordPress themes handle display sizing independently, and most performance plugins handle compression and format conversion at upload time.
If you are building a photography portfolio or a site where image display is central to the design, revisit this once you have your theme set up and you can see how images are actually rendered. Changing media dimensions does not retroactively affect images already in your library.
6. Privacy Settings
Go to Settings → Privacy.
WordPress can generate a default Privacy Policy page for you. Click Generate page if one does not already exist. The generated content is a template — it covers the standard clauses but will need editing to accurately reflect how your specific site collects and handles data, particularly if you use analytics, email sign-up forms, or any third-party services.
Once the page exists, assign it here so WordPress can reference it in places like the registration and comment forms.
Practical Tips
Do the permalink change before any other publishing. This cannot be overstated. Even publishing a test post before switching to Post name means that URL will not automatically update — WordPress does not redirect old slugs when you change permalink structure.
Set the timezone correctly even if you plan to publish manually. Scheduled posts, plugin logs, and backup timestamps all use the WordPress timezone. Getting them misaligned is a small annoyance that becomes harder to untangle over time.
Remove or replace the default tagline. “Just another WordPress site” appears in theme headers and page titles on many themes. It looks unfinished and tells search engines nothing useful about your site.
Common Mistakes
Skipping permalinks and changing them later. The most common and costly mistake. Every URL on the site changes, old links break, and ranking history tied to old URLs needs to be migrated with 301 redirects.
Leaving the search engine visibility block ticked after launch. This is easy to miss if you set up the site in private mode during development. A site with this ticked will not be indexed by Google, regardless of how well optimised the content is.
Not verifying the admin email address. WordPress sends security alerts, plugin notifications, and new comment flags to this address. If it points to an inbox nobody checks, important notifications get missed.
When to Revisit These Settings
Most of these are set once and left alone. The exception is Discussion Settings — if you decide to enable comments after initially disabling them (or vice versa), you will need to come back here. Reading Settings also gets revisited if you restructure your homepage or add a dedicated blog index page. Everything else, particularly Permalinks, should be treated as a one-time decision made before launch.
Conclusion
Work through these six screens before publishing anything. The ten minutes it takes at the start is significantly less time than fixing permalink changes, spam accumulation, or indexing blocks after the site is live. Once settings are in place, your next step is usually setting up key pages — including a working contact form so visitors can actually reach you.
Etienne Basson works with website systems, SEO-driven site architecture, and technical implementation. He writes practical guides on building, structuring, and optimizing websites for long-term growth.