Useful Wordpress Settings

Below are some useful Wordpress settings that ought to help your ds106 blogging.

Showing Yourself As More Than "Admin"
When you create your wordpress blog, the first account is usually named admin, but when you post content or reply to a comment, it is typically attributed to a nebulous person named... "admin"!



That is not personal at all! You can change the way your account is displayed by going to Users in your Wordpress Dashboard, and then edit the account listed as admin. You cannot change the username (that is how you log in, but you can enter your first and last name and/or a nickname. Save that information.



And then you will have a few options on how your name will appear on your site under the "Display Name As" menu. Pick and option and save again.

Once you make this change, it will magically change it everywhere in your site.

Set Your Local Time Zone
On a new Wordpress blog, the time/date for a post is generated is relative to the time zone where-ever your server is located, but Wordpress then adjusts it according to any time zone. This is useful, but when you create a new one, the reference time is Greenwich mean time, which is fine if you live in London. If you go to Settings - General, you can select a timezone based on the nearest city.



And then all the date and times will reflect your own location. This too will change for every time/date listed on your blog. It's like... magic? No, its because our site is driven by a database.

Flickr Auto Embeds Come in Small Sized
It is useful to be able to embed flickr photos simply via entering its URL, but in many themes, the picture that comes in is pretty small. This also happens to many new users when they upload images. This has to do with a setting that defines the sizes that Wordpress makes of your images when you upload them - Wordpress generates ate last 4 copies of your image ni different sizes. he default setting when you enter a new image is the "Medium" size, usually 300px wide. You can change the size that Wordpress makes for this via Settings - Media, and change the medium width to be something closer to the maximum width of your theme display (this varies with themes, I would suggest trying at least 500px and maybe 600px).

It also helps with flickr uploads to set a maximum width for embedded images, again, this is the width of your main column measured in pixels. You can figure out this width bt taking a screen shot and then opening it in a graphics program.

Experiment with some of these settings:



It seems like the way this works might vary with different themes, so let us know.

For flickr, you can also use code the site provides under the "Share" button for an image. Select the option for Grab the HTML/BBCode, select a size, and click the HTML button:



Copy the code in the box. When you return to your Wordpress editor, you will have to toggle to the text mode (upper right corner of editor) to paste in the HTML.