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Writing Settings
The settings I discuss in this article define how you post on your WordPress Blog. From enabling the ability to post via e-mail to determining the size of the box in which you type your blog posts, the Writing Settings panel is the place to set your writing options.
Posting from WordPress
The posting settings affect the experience of posting on your WordPress Blog from within the WordPress application itself.
Post-box size
By default, the post box is 10 lines long by default, which I find to be more than big enough for my purposes. If you need more space to write, feel free to change the Size of Post Box value. The maximum is 100 lines, though I can't imagine why you would want your posting box to be that large.
Formatting: Emoticons
Emoticons are all the rage with the kids these days, or so I'm told, and WordPress can cater to the emoticon set. If you check the pertinent check box in the Formatting part, WordPress automatically converts emoticons to graphic representations of the various smiley faces\. This functionality can also be triggered by typing certain key terms, such as :lol: and :cool:. Enabling emoticons allows both commenters and bloggers to use them. You can add your own custom smilies by replacing the files in root/ wp-includes/images/smilies, where root is the directory in which WordPress is installed. Be sure to replace the files with small GIF files that are named the same way.
Formatting: XHTML
The second check box in the Formatting part-WordPress Should Correct Invalidly Nested XHTML Automatically-is decidedly less whimsical. XHTML is a stricter form of HTML, which you are no doubt familiar with. Both XHTML and HTML are tag-based languages. XHTML, however, requires every tag to have a closing tag, whereas HTML is a little more lax in that department. If you want your WordPress Blog's code to validate, you should check this check box; otherwise, you can safely ignore it.
Default post and hyperlink categories
You can set default categories for both blog posts and hyperlinks. Choose a category from the Default Post Category or Default Link Category drop-down menu, and any new blog post or hyperlink automatically falls into that category. Links and blog posts don't share category lists, so you'll see a different list of values in each drop-down menu. It would be nice if you could have WordPress not apply a category to new blog posts and hyperlinks. I don't know about you, but I blog about a wide range of topics, and no single category applies to all my blog posts and hyperlinks. Perhaps a future version of WordPress will allow me-and bloggers like me-to turn off default categorization.
Remote posting
You have two choices for posting on your WordPress Blog:
- Use the posting tools in the WordPress administration interface.
- Use a third-party desktop/mobile application to post to your WordPress Blog.
The second option is known as remote posting in WordPress speak. The protocols required to use a third-party blogging application are disabled by default in WordPress as of version 2.6. Because most people use WordPress to post, the developers decided to close off all unnecessary protocols and possible attack vectors. That being said, I'm unaware of any security holes in either remote posting protocols, so one of the first things I do in a WordPress 2.6 installation is enable both Atom Publishing Protocol and XML-RPC in the Remote Publishing part. If you don't plan to use a third-party blogging tool, you should leave these protocols disabled.
Posting via e-mail
Wouldn't it be great if you could e-mail your WordPress Blog and have it post the contents of that e-mail? WordPress gives you that capability, though this feature is pretty rudimentary at this point. You have to provide WordPress login credentials for a POP email account. The account must be accessible via POP because WordPress actually logs in to this account and checks for messages. The idea is pretty simple: You set up a secret e-mail address that WordPress can check. WordPress checks the e-mail account and posts the contents of the e-mail to your WordPress Blog, using the subject as the title of the blog post and the body of the message as the body of the post. Sadly, WordPress can't check this account for e-mail on its own. You have to visit a URL that fires off a process that checks the account and posts the e-mailed post. The situation isn't ideal, but you can use a couple of work-arounds:
- To the footer of your WordPress Blog, add a frame that includes some code that visits the address where the wp-mail.php file is located. Every time one of your WordPress Blog pages is loaded, WordPress checks the e-mail account for e-mailed posts.
- Use cron, a Unix program that runs tasks on a schedule, to visit wp-mail.php at regular intervals. Check your Web host's documentation to see whether you have access to cron on the host's servers.
I should point out that posting via e-mail doesn't support posting attachments, which means that you can't e-mail a picture to your WordPress blog and have it post automatically. You can add this functionality with a plug-in. You need to provide WordPress the following information before you can post via e-mail.
- Mail Server. This part actually has two parts: the Mail Server field and the Port field. You need to provide the address of your mail server so that WordPress knows where to check for the e-mailed posts. The port number is set to the default for POP3, which is the only kind of e-mail account WordPress can check. If your e-mail server uses a different port, make sure to set it here.
- Login Name. In this text box, enter the name of the account that WordPress will use to log in to the account. Typically, this account is the same as the e-mail address used for the e-mail posting.
- Password. This setting is the password of the e-mail account you set up for mobile blogging.
- Default Mail Category. Much as you set a default category for every post and hyperlink in WordPress, you can set a default category for blog posts sent via e-mail. You may think that having a default category for regular blog posts and hyperlinks is silly, but this option makes perfect sense. Adding a category like Posts from On the Go or Moblogging tells your readers that you tapped the blog post out on a tiny keyboard, so it may contain a few more typos than usual.
Update services
You started a WordPress Blog because you want people to read what you post, right? One way to get readers, in the crowded blogosphere, is to ping an update service-a central place that keeps a list of recently updated blogs. When you post a new entry to your blog, you ping the update service that you posted something, and the service duly notes it. When someone asks that service for recently updated posts, it returns a hyperlink to your new blog post, along with other recently posted entries. You can find lots of update services out there, which has led Automattic to create Ping-o-Matic. Ping-o-Matic is a central update service that updates the other update services. WordPress ships configured to tell Ping-o-Matic whenever you post something, and the service then informs a host of other update services. You can remove Ping-o-Matic simply by deleting that entry in the Update Services part, or you can add another update service by pasting the proper URL into the text box. Be sure to separate URLs with line breaks by pressing Enter or Return after each URL.