Essential Settings: Permalinks, Reading & Discussion

By the end of this lesson your site will have clean addresses, the right timezone, a proper homepage and sensible comment rules. These settings take ten minutes on day one, and they save you painful fixes later.

Think of it like setting up a new phone. You choose the language, time and ringtone first. You could do it later, but things go wrong in the meantime.

General settings

Open Settings > General. Work through it from top to bottom.

Two warnings. First, do not change the two URL fields unless you know why; a typing mistake can lock you out. Second, choose the city Kolkata, not "UTC+5:30". The city setting follows a proper timezone name, which is the better choice wherever you live.

Click Save Changes at the bottom of every settings screen. Forgetting this is the most common reason "my setting did not work".

Permalinks: clean addresses

A permalink is the permanent address of a post or page. Go to Settings > Permalinks. You will see choices like these:

Plain             https://brightfuture.in/?p=123
Day and name      https://brightfuture.in/2026/11/02/sample-post/
Month and name    https://brightfuture.in/2026/11/sample-post/
Numeric           https://brightfuture.in/archives/123
Post name         https://brightfuture.in/sample-post/
Custom Structure  your own pattern, such as /blog/%postname%/

For most sites, choose Post name. It is short, readable and easy to share. A link like /jee-main-tips/ tells a person (and a search engine) what the page is about. A link like /?p=123 tells nobody anything.

Step 1: Select Post name.

Step 2: Click Save Changes.

Step 3: Open any post. Its address should now end with its slug, such as /class-10-maths-tips/.

Set this before you publish many posts. Changing permalinks later breaks old links that people have shared, unless you add redirects.

On Apache servers, WordPress makes pretty links work by writing rules into a file called .htaccess in the site's main folder. A standard block looks like this:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

In plain words: "If the requested file or folder does not really exist, hand the request to WordPress's index.php." WordPress then reads the address and finds the right post. Nginx servers do not use .htaccess; the host sets similar rules in the server configuration.

Reading settings: your homepage

Open Settings > Reading.

Your homepage displays has two options:

• Your latest posts: the homepage is a blog list. Good for a news site or personal blog.
• A static page: you choose a page as the homepage. Good for business sites.

For a coaching centre, a shop or a clinic, use a static page. Here is how:

1. Step 1: Create two pages: "Home" and "Blog". Leave "Blog" empty; WordPress fills it with posts.
2. Step 2: In Settings > Reading, choose A static page.
3. Step 3: Set Homepage to "Home" and Posts page to "Blog".
4. Step 4: Save. Your site address now shows the Home page, and /blog/ shows your posts.

With a block theme, the Site Editor's templates also affect what the homepage looks like. You will see this in The Site Editor & Full Site Editing.

Search engine visibility is a checkbox called "Discourage search engines from indexing this site". Tick it on a test site. Untick it when your real site goes live. Many new sites stay invisible on Google for weeks because someone forgot this box.

Discussion settings: comments and spam

Open Settings > Discussion. Comments are useful on a blog but are a magnet for spam bots. Sensible settings for a small business site:

These settings apply to new posts. Old posts keep their own comment setting, which you can change in bulk from Posts > All Posts with Bulk actions > Edit.

Other settings screens

• Settings > Writing: default post category and format.
• Settings > Media: image size limits and whether uploads go into month and year folders.
• Settings > Privacy: choose your Privacy Policy page. WordPress can create a draft to start from, which you must edit for your real data practices.

Settings from the command line

Every setting is stored in the wp_options table. Developers can read and change them with WP-CLI (covered fully in WP-CLI: WordPress from the Command Line):

wp option get timezone_string
wp option get blog_public
wp rewrite structure '/%postname%/'

Asia/Kolkata
1
Success: Rewrite structure set.
Success: Rewrite rules flushed.

blog_public is 1 when search engines are allowed and 0 when the "Discourage" box is ticked.

Common mistakes

• Leaving "Discourage search engines" ticked after launch.
• Changing permalinks on an old site without redirects, breaking every shared link.
• Turning on "Anyone can register" with the default role set to Administrator. Never do this; keep the default role as Subscriber.
• Not clicking Save Changes at the bottom of the screen.
• Ignoring the admin email. WordPress sends recovery links there when a plugin breaks the site.

Key points

• Set the site title, admin email and the Kolkata timezone first.
• Choose Post name permalinks before publishing; re-save permalinks to fix sudden 404s.
• Business sites usually need a static homepage and a separate Posts page.
• Untick "Discourage search engines" when the site goes live.
• Discussion settings control comments and spam; manual approval is a safe default.
• All settings live in the wp_options table and can be read with WP-CLI.

wp option get timezone_string
wp option get permalink_structure

Asia/Kolkata
/%postname%/