Administering a WordPress Blog
Changing the Administrator
By default when you first create a WordPress installation a single user is created for you called admin so that you can login. This user has full privileges for the site but it has the name of admin.
However if you create posts whilst logged in as the admin user they will show up with ‘admin’ as the author and this is undesirable if you wish to promote a personal or business brand with your blog.
Seeing as you are the blog owner you obviously also need full privileges so what I tend to do is simply to edit the default admin user and give it the chosen name. You still login with the username of ‘admin’ but posts are published, they come up as having being written by the name you chose.
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.
Configuring 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’.
The default settings have changed a bit in recent WordPress releases but here are some of the points to be aware of:
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!
The next section allows you to modify the email settings. By default the administrator user will be sent an email every time a comment is left but if you have a popular blog with many comments every day this can soon become overwhelming. I turn off the email functionality and make a point of checking comments on a daily basis.
By default, when somebody leaves a comment it is published immediately and of course that can be good or bad depending on your point of view. If somebody posts something abusive or spammy then you might want to know about it beforehand and this is largely dependent on the topic of your blog.
Generally speaking, the comments that are left by real people (as opposed to spammers) are fine. There is a plugin called akismet which is installed with all WordPress installations and that will catch 99% of spam so I rarely feel the need to moderate my comments too much. However, one thing that can be irritating is when people drop in too many links so I specify that any comment with 2 or more links will go into the moderation queue.
When a comment enters the moderation queue you will physically have to click the ‘approve’ button for each comment before it gets published live which obviously causes a delay for the comment poster so my advice is to use moderation sparingly.
Caroline Middlebrook has written a popular blog since 2007 which earns a 4-figure monthly income. She demonstrates how to make money blogging and offers free downloads of her free guides & courses.