Blog Administration in WordPress
Modifying the Administrator
When WordPress is first installed it comes pre-loaded with a default user called ‘admin’ which has a generated password which is emailed to you. This account has full user privileges and allows you to login for the first time.
Generally speaking, most bloggers will want to promote themselves as a personality as well as the blog itself and therefore you want your own name to be used on your blog.
As the blog owner, the account you use to login to WordPress needs to have full privileges but you want your posts to come out under the chosen name. An easy way to achieve this is to simple edit the admin user and give it a different name which will appear on posts.
From your WordPress dashboard, click on the ‘users’ link and find the ‘admin’ username. From here you can edit various details such as the first and last name, the email address and some other fields. Type in the chosen name but for it to be shown on posts you will also need to click on the drop down box entitled ‘Display name publicly as’ and select the new name you entered.
Be sure to also change your password to something secure and then click the save button.
Setting up Comment Moderation
As your blog grows it will attract more and more comments and alongside the genuine comments from your readers, you’ll also attract some spam so we’ll need to make some adjustments. From your dashboard click on ‘Settings’ and then ‘Discussion’.
Some of the options in this section have changed a little in recent releases of WordPress but the main sections to be aware of are:
There are two checkboxes that specify whether users are allowed to comment and allowed to leave trackbacks. Both of these boxes should be checked or you will not be allowing any comments at all!
You can alter the email settings here. This is largely a matter of preference. By default WordPress will send the administrator an email when a new comment is left but that can soon become overwhelming if your blog becomes popular. I turn this off and make a point of checking my comments on a daily basis.
Another setting which is a matter of personal taste is whether or not comments should be published immediately or placed into a moderation queue for later approval. From the users point of view, immediate publication is more user friendly but it can easily be abused by spammers and people who wish to abuse your blog in some way!
WordPress comes installed with the akismet plugin which will trap about 99% of spam so the vast majority of comments that get through will be from legitimate users and I find that most people do leave genuine comments which are no problem so I prefer not to moderate too much. The only thing I find to be an occasional problem is people leaving lots of links in a signature or something so I moderate all comments with 2 or more links.
Any comment that is moderated goes into a moderation queue. You will need to manually click the ‘approve’ button for each one before it will be published and visible on the blog.
Caroline Middlebrook has been writing a popular blog since 2007 which earns a 4-figure monthly income. She demonstrates how to make money blogging and gives away free downloads of her free guides & courses.
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