Reading Settings: What Visitors See First
In your WordPress dashboard, click Settings → Reading.
This is where you decide what appears on your website’s homepage, how blog posts are displayed and whether search engines should index your website.
Your Homepage Displays
WordPress gives you two choices for your homepage:
- Your latest posts: Your homepage displays your newest blog posts, with the most recent appearing first. This is useful for blogs and news websites that publish new content regularly.
- A static page: Your homepage displays a specific page that you create. This is usually what you’ll want for a small-business website.
For example, Joe’s Auto Repair would probably want visitors to see its business name, services, location and contact information—not a list of blog posts.
That’s why we’ll eventually choose A static page.
However, we haven’t created our homepage yet! For now, leave this setting alone. Once we’ve built our pages, we’ll return here and select the homepage we’ve created.
What If You Want a Blog, Too?
You can have both a regular business homepage and a separate page for blog posts.
For example, Joe’s Auto Repair might create a page called Repair Tips, where it publishes articles about vehicle maintenance and common car problems.
Once you’ve created that page, you can return to Reading Settings and select it from the Posts page dropdown.
WordPress will automatically display your published blog posts there.
You don’t have to create a blog. If your business doesn’t need one, simply leave the Posts page unselected.
Blog Pages Show at Most
This setting determines how many blog posts WordPress displays on each page of your blog.
The default is usually 10 posts. Once you have more than that, WordPress can display additional posts on subsequent pages.
For now, leave this setting at its default.
Syndication Feeds
You’ll see another setting labeled Syndication feeds show the most recent.
WordPress can create an RSS feed that allows people and other applications to follow your published content.
You don’t need to set up an RSS feed yourself, and there’s no reason to change this setting for our basic business website.
For Each Post in a Feed, Include
You can choose whether your RSS feed includes the full text of each post or just a short excerpt.
If you plan to publish articles later, an excerpt can encourage readers to visit your website to read the complete article.
For now, leave the default setting alone.
Search Engine Visibility
Now here’s a setting worth paying attention to!
Near the bottom of the page, you’ll see a checkbox labeled:
Discourage search engines from indexing this site.
It may sound like a good idea to check this box while you’re still building your website, but in most cases, leave it unchecked.
Even while your website is being developed, you don’t want to tell Google, Bing, and other search engines to ignore it. It can take time for search engines to discover and index a new website, so there’s no need to deliberately keep them away while you work.
Leave this box unchecked so search engines are free to find your website.
Save Your Changes
If you’ve changed any settings, scroll down and click Save Changes.
Otherwise, you’re finished with Reading Settings for now. We’ll return when we’ve created our homepage and are preparing to launch the website.
Quick Tip: Don’t Forget to Go Public!
If you’ve checked the box to discourage search engines while building your website, make sure you uncheck it before launching.
Even after you’ve allowed indexing, appearing in Google or other search results can take time. Unchecking the box doesn’t guarantee immediate inclusion.
Want the Down & Dirty Version? Step 6 WordPress – Settings
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