The writing settings controls WordPress writing experience and provides options for customizing WordPress site. These settings control WordPress’s features in the adding and editing posts, Pages, and Post Types, as well as the optional functions like Remote Publishing, Post via e-mail, and Update Services.
Following are the details of the fields on writing settings.
- Formatting: This field defines two sub options for better user experience.
- The first option Convert emoticons like 🙂 and 😛 to graphics on display will turn text based emoticons into graphic based ones.
- The second option WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically will correct the invalid XHTML placed within the posts or pages.
- Default Post Category: It is a category to be applied to a post and you can leave it as Uncategorized.
- Default Post Format: It is used by themes to select post format to be applied to a post or create different styles for different types of posts.
- Post via e-mail: This option uses email address to create post for you and publishes posts on your blog by email. To use this, you’ll need to set up a secret e-mail account with a POP3 access, and any mail received at this address will be posted.
- Mail Server: It allows reading the emails that you send to WordPress and stores them for retrieval. For this you need to have POP3 compatible mail server and it will have URI address such as mail.example.com, which you should enter here.
- Login Name: To create posts, WordPress will need its own email account. The Login Name will use this email address and should be kept secret as spammers will posts link redirecting to their own websites.
- Password: Set password for the above email address.
- Default Mail Category: It allows selecting custom category for all the posts that are published via Post by email feature.
- Update Services: When you publish a new post, WordPress will automatically notify the site update services in the box. See the Update Services on the codex for the long list of possible services.
