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The Reading settings on a WordPress website, allow you to change the configuration of your WordPress site’s settings, blog pages, RSS feed settings, etc. to customize your WordPress site.
Table of Contents
Change Your WordPress Reading Settings
To access your WordPress Dashboard, you need to first sign in to your Hosted.com account.
1. Login to your Hosted.com account with your username and password.
2. Click on “Manage Services”.
3. Select “WordPress Hosting” from the drop-down menu.
4. Click “Manage” on the right of the screen
5. In “Product Information” followed by “Control Panel” you will see cPanel on the right
6. Click “Login”.
7. Click on your domain name to go to your WordPress Admin area.
8. On your WordPress Dashboard:
9. Go to “Settings” and select “Reading.”
The Various Reading Settings:
On your WordPress dashboard go to “Settings” in the menu on the left of your screen and select “Reading”. You will find the following options available for customization.
Site Settings:
- Your WordPress website’s homepage displays – choose which page you want to display as your Home Page – default setting is the theme’s default page.
- Default posts page – choose a page to display other than the theme’s index template.
Blog Pages:
- Set the number of blog posts on the default posts page (10 or less is usually advise to lessen loading times).
Related Posts:
- This section will display (or not) after the Blog post if you want to show related Blog posts.
- There are options to what you want to display in this section such as; Highlight related content with a heading, Show a thumbnail image where available, Show post publish date, Show post category or tags
RSS Feed Settings:
- Syndication feeds – allows you to set the number of blog posts to be included in your website’s RSS feed
- For each post in a fee include – this allows you to include the Full text or an Excerpt
Syndication Feeds show the most recent:
Set the number of syndication feeds to display.
For each Article in a Feed show:
Set choose between full text or Summary versions.
Search Engine Visibility
Here, you can request that search engines do not index your site, however this is up to the search engine itself.
Here you can choose the options for the Related Posts section displayed after single blog posts:
- Show related content after posts toggles the related posts section on or off.
- To clearly separate the related posts section from the rest of the content, you can choose to show a Related header on the section, using the second checkbox.
- You can choose to display thumbnails, date, category and tags for the posts in the Related section.
Additional Information:
Changing the Reading Settings in your WordPress Dashboard empowers you to customize the presentation and accessibility of your website’s content to align with your goals and preferences.
This allows you to change emails you send, amend the RSS feed and customize your WordPress site. This article assumes you have WordPress Hosting with Hosted.com.
Why Change the Reading Settings
Changing these settings can present many benefits, including:
Customization
It allows you to customize how your WordPress website’s content is displayed to visitors. You can control whether your front page displays your latest blog posts or is a static page.
Enhanced User Experience
By adjusting settings such as the number of posts displayed per page, you can improve user experience for visitors navigating your site.
SEO Optimization
Enhancing the settings can make a positive impact on your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). As an example, displaying a static front page with key information about your site can help search engines understand your site’s purpose and improve its ranking.
Content Focus
You can prioritize certain types of content, whether you want to highlight your blog posts or showcase specific pages, adjusting these settings enables you to direct visitors’ attention where you want it most.
RSS Feed Management
If your WordPress website has an RSS feed, modifying these settings allows you to control how many posts are syndicated in the feed. This can be beneficial for managing content distribution.
RSS Feed Explained
An RSS feed is a tool for distributing website content updates to an audience in one place, in an easy-to-read XML format. RSS feeds contain information about the updated posts, including a title, a summary, and a link to where it is on your website. You can display the entire feed or just an overview of what is available.
Users can subscribe to your website’s content using an RSS reader. This reader is a software tool that collects RSS feeds from multiple websites. The feeds will then access a chronological list of your published content. When you add new content to your site, the feed will automatically update in real time, letting them know when new posts are live.
Subscribers will receive updates directly in their feed instead of having to keep checking your page for the latest content, saving them time, and ensuring they don’t miss new posts. This can lead to increased traffic, better user engagement, and reaching a wider audience.
