Below are summaries of the pages you can find under the Settings tab in the sidebar of your WordPress dashboard. The pages that automatically come with WordPress are General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media and Permalinks. If you have plugins activated on your site, their settings pages may be found under Settings as well. General Site Title The name of your site or blog. This title will display in the headers of EWU themes and in the tab's titlebar. Tagline A slogan or brief description of your site. The tagline is optional. Email Address The email address you use for admin purposes. WordPress will send all messages and notifications regarding the administration and maintenance of your site to this email. Site Language The WordPress dashboard language, as well as the language that will appear on your site. Timezone From the drop-down, you can either choose a city in the same timezone as you, or you can select a UTC timezone offset. During the summer months, while daylight saving time is in effect, Washington's timezone is UTC-7. Otherwise, Washington's timezone is UTC-8. We recommend you select Los Angeles so that you do not have to remember to change your timezone when daylight saving time comes into effect. Date Format How dates are displayed on your site. Time Format How times are displayed on your site. Week Starts On Your preferred start day for WordPress calendars. The default is Monday, so if you want your calendars to display Sunday in the first column, select Sunday from the drop down. Writing The following settings control the interface you use when writing new posts. Formatting These checkboxes control some of your blog's formatting: Convert emoticons like :-) and :-P to graphics on display - This tells WordPress to automatically convert emoticons in your posts into graphical smilies. WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically - When this option is checked, WordPress will automatically correct any XHTML errors made in your coding that may adversely affect how your website or post displays. Because you are likely to be using either the WordPress Text Editor or Page Builder to add content to your posts and pages and therefore will not be writing code, and because checking this option may interfere with plugins, we recommend you do not check this option. Default Post Category The category assigned by default to your posts, if you do not choose other categories for them. If you delete a category, the posts in that category will automatically be assigned to the default post category. The default post category that comes with WordPress is called Uncategorized. It is strongly recommended that you delete Uncategorized, create your own, and set one of your categories as the default. Default Post Format Post formats create different styling for different types of posts. Because our themes do not support different post formats, it is best to leave this option set to Standard. Default Link Category If you have the Links Widget active on your site, you can display a set of links. These links are sorted under link categories. If you do not assign a link category to a new link, it will automatically be assigned to the default link category, which you can set here. For more information, see WordPress' article: Link Categories. Reading This section determines display options for your front page, blog posts and syndication feeds and allows you to set whether or not your site is visible to certain visitors or search engines. Front page displays Determine what displays on your site's main page. You can either display your latest posts or a static front page. Your latest posts - Check this radio button so that your latest posts are displayed on the front page. The number of posts you display is determined by the "Blog pages show at most" option below. A static page - Check this radio button and select a page you have created to be displayed as your site's front page. If you have built and styled a homepage for your site, select it from the drop-down menu labeled Front Page. If you want your latest posts to be displayed on another page, you can select that page from the drop-down labeled Posts page. If you choose a static front page for your site, the Posts page will be the only place visitors can access your blog posts, aside from the following category, calendar or archive links. Blog pages show at most This setting determines the number of posts to be displayed, per page, on your site. Syndication feeds show the most recent This setting determines the number of posts people will see when they download one of your site's feeds. For each article in a feed, show This setting determines whether or not the feed will include the full article or just a summary of the article. Full text - Select to include the full content of each post Summary - Select to include a summary of the post. This could save bandwidth. Site Visibility These settings determine the visibility of your site to search engines and regular visitors. Allow search engines to index this site - Select this option to make your site visible to regular visitors and to enable your site to be included in search engine results. This option is recommended if your site is ready to be public. Discourage search engines from indexing this site - Select this option to allow human visitors to read your site but disallow search engines from displaying your site in search results (note: it is up to search engines to respect this setting). Visible only to registered users of this network - Select this option to restrict site access to logged in community members. Visitors will need to log in via SSO to access your site. Visible only to registered users of this site - Select this option to restrict site access to registered users of your site. In EWU's multisite network, the site admin will need to invite users to their site for them to be able to register. Because you will need to manually add each user, this option is not recommended. To add a new user, select Users from your site dashboard, then select the Add New button at the top of the page. Enter the username and email of the new user, then select their role. For more about roles in WordPress, see Roles and Capabilities in the WordPress Codex. Visible only to administrators of this site - Select this option to restrict access to logged in administrators. This option is recommended if your site is under construction and not yet ready to be presented to the public. Discussion The following settings allow you to control options concerning comments, email notifications, and avatars. Default article settings Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article - If this option is checked, WordPress will send out a notification to a site or article you have linked to in your post if that site allows pingbacks. Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new articles - Select this option to allow WordPress to accept notifications from other sites that may reference your site or an article on your site. These notifications will appear in the comments section of your post. Allow people to post comments on new articles - Check this box to allow comments on your posts. This option can be overridden for individual articles. Other comment settings Comment author must fill out name and email - Checking this option may reduce spam by forcing spammers to do extra work. Names and email addresses are not verified prior to the comment being submitted, however. Users must be registered and logged in to comment - Select to restrict commenting to logged in registered users. Automatically close comments on articles other than [X] days - Check this box and enter the number of days to automatically disallow comments on posts older than the set number of days. Enable threaded (nested) comments [X] levels deep - Check this box to enable threaded comments. Select the number of levels deep you will allow for nested comments. Some themes may not display threaded comments. Break comments into pages with [X] top level comments per page and the [last/first] page displayed by default. Comments should be displayed with the [older/newer] comments at the top of each page - Check this box to display comments in a paginated format with a specified number of comments on each page. Determine if pages will be ordered first to last, and whether the oldest or newest comments will be displayed first on each page. Email me whenever Controls when notifications are sent to either a post author or the site administrator whose email is used for admin purposes. Anyone posts a comment - Select so that every comment posted will generate an email to the author of that post. A comment is held for moderation - Select so that WordPress sends a notification if a comment is being held for moderation. Before a comment appears Comment must be manually approved - Select to require that comments be approved by a moderator before they can be displayed. Comment author must have a previously approved comment - Select to ensure comments are only posted if the author's email matches the email of a previously approved comment. Otherwise, the comment must be approved by a moderator. Comment Moderation In this section, you can determine how many links a comment can contain before it is held for moderation. This is because spam comments often include links. Spammers rarely use more than two links now, so keeping this limit at the default of two is recommended. You can also add spam words in the text box that filter comments when posted. If the comment's content, name, URL, email or IP contains a listed word, it will be held for moderation. This is largely unnecessary now, thanks to EWU's use of the anti-spam Akismet plugin. Comment Blacklist Similar to content moderation, you can list spam words so that if a comment contains the word in its content, name, URL or IP address, the comment will automatically be put in the trash. Avatars An avatar is an image that appears next to your name when you are logged in and comment on avatar enabled sites. With these settings, you can choose to enable avatars for people who comment on your site. Avatar Display - Check this box to enable avatars Maximum Rating - This setting controls the highest level or rating you allow to be displayed. Default Avatar - For users without an Avatar, you can set a default avatar for them. You can either display a generic logo or a generated avatar based on their email address. Media Media settings control images and other media that are used in writing posts and pages. Image sizes Determine the maximum dimensions in pixels to use for thumbnails, medium sizes and large sizes when added an image to the Media Library. For thumbnails, it is recommended you check the "Crop thumbnail to exact dimensions" box. Permalinks Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your pages, blog posts, category archives and tag archives. Because a permalink is the web address used to link to your content, your URLs should never change. Otherwise, visitors may click on broken links and be directed to your 404 page. This settings page allows you to determine how your permalinks are generated for each post or page. Common Settings Check one of the radio buttons to select which permalink structure you want for your site. Which permalink structure you choose depends on context. Time-based sites such as blogs typically use date formats, while the posts format may be more suited to sites that mostly have static pages instead of posts. Optional You may enter custom bases, or prefixes, for your category and tag URLs. For example, if you specify /topics/ as your category base, your category URLs will look like https://yoursite.edu/topics/category-name/. If you do not specify a category or tag bases, the defaults will be used instead. Saving Changes Whenever you make changes to your settings, remember to save your changes by selecting the Save Changes button at the bottom of your settings pages.

Summary Content on individual InsideEWU webpages may be protected from public view using Single Sign-On (SSO). This feature is available only on the latest EWU theme. Protection Options Two types of protection are available Use WordPress Defaults This default option does not enable any additional EWU SSO features into your page. Published content follows the access rules set by your WordPress website. Require EWU Single Sign-On to view this page Enabling this option will require a valid login with EWU SSO in order to view the page content. The page is protected from anyone without an EWU account. Search engines will not be able to index content on the page. Only EWU students, faculty, staff, and any EWU guest accounts can read the page. Only display this page to EWU Employees using EWU Single Sign-On Enabling this option will require both a valid login to EWU SSO and that the logged-in user is an EWU faculty or staff member. The page is protected from anyone without an EWU account, students, and EWU guests. Search engines will not be able to index content on the page. Setting Protection on a Page Select Edit Page to edit the page properties   Find the EWU Single Sign-On widget. Select the desired protection level for your page. The most common usage is Use WordPress Defaults. In this case, the page content will follow the same WordPress settings as the rest of your website. Selecting the "Require EWU Single Sign-On to view this page" option will activate the Require Single Sign-On protection option. Selecting the "Only display this content to EWU employees" option will activate the Display to EWU Employees protection option.

Pages Pages in WordPress are for non-chronological content: pages like “About” or “Contact” would be common examples. Pages live outside of the normal blog chronology and are often used to present timeless information about yourself or your site — information that is always relevant. You can use Pages to organize and manage the structure of your website content. What Pages Are Pages are for content that isn’t specifically time-dependent or that isn’t “blog content.” Pages can be organized into pages and subpages. Making a website using WordPress, which only contains pages, is quite possible. What Pages Are Not Pages are not posts, so they don’t appear in the time-structured views within a blog section of a website. The organizational structure for Pages comes from hierarchical interrelationships, not from a categorization system. (e.g., Tags or Categories.) A specific page (or a specific post) can be set as a static front page. Websites set up in this way usually have a secondary page on which the latest blog posts are displayed. Pages and Posts can be interpreted differently by site visitors and by search engines. Commonly, search engines place more relevance on time-dependent site content – posts – because a newer post on a topic may be more relevant than a static page. The general rule is to use pages for static content and use posts for more timely information like news, events, etc. Posts Posts in WordPress are for chronological content: posts like “Today in the PUB” or “Catch Cat-Scratch Fever in the Mall Friday” would be common examples. Posts live inside of the normal blog chronology and are often used to present time-sensitive information about yourself, your department, or your organization.  When combined with categories and tags, posts can be an effective way to keep in touch with your campus constituents and the EWU community at large. What Posts Are Posts are for content that is usually time-dependent. Posts can be organized by using categories and tags. Posts, in general, perform better than Pages in search engine optimization. What Posts Are Not Posts are not pages, so they appear in a time-structured view within a blog section of a website. The organizational structure for Posts comes from a system of categorization. (e.g., Tags or Categories.).  The organizational structure for Pages comes from hierarchical interrelationships. Posts and Pages can be interpreted differently by site visitors and by search engines. Commonly, search engines place more relevance on time-dependent site content – posts – because a newer post on a topic may be more relevant than a static page.

WordPress Categories WordPress categories are used to create groups of content that fit the primary topics of your site. Blog posts should clearly fit into a single category. In some rare cases it may be appropriate for a post to fit two categories, but this is definitely the exception rather than the rule. WordPress Tags While categories are intended to create logical groups of content, tags are best used to create groups of content that apply to multiple categories. That being the case, posts will often have multiple tags applied to them.  By Example Let's take a food blog as an example. A list of categories that a food blog would include might be:  Breakfast  Lunch  Dinner  Appetizers  Soups  Salads  Sides  Desserts  You can see that there’s definitely room for sub-genres and more specificity as a search engine or human digs deeper, but it’s not so broad that there’s confusion about what to expect in each of those categories. All recipes will fit within those categories, but users might want to search for something specific like chocolate desserts or ginger chicken dinners.  Chocolate, ginger, and chicken are all examples of tags. They are another level of specificity that provides meaning to the user.

Creating a Menu When you first make a WordPress site and start creating pages, you may notice your site is missing something crucial: a menu.  Menus are important because they are the main way your users navigate your site—that’s why the primary menu is also called the navigation. WordPress does not create menus automatically, so you must create one yourself.  To do so, go to your WordPress admin dashboard and follow the steps below. Go to Appearance > Menus. Click create a new menu. Give your menu a name.  Typically, we name our main navigation primary. Click the View All tab, and select a page to add to the menu. In our example, we select the Home page. Click the Add to Menu button to add the page to the primary menu. Under Menu Settings, select the checkbox Primary Menu. Click the blue Save Menu button. For a larger image, right-click and select Open Image in New Tab Adding Links to the Primary Menu It's important to remember that when building or editing the primary menu in our environment, we need to make sure that it is as accessible as possible.