We looked at ‘General Settings’ in the last article now the next one is ‘Writing’. Go down to Settings and click on Writing. You will see the following options.

We will go through these settings one at a time.

Size of the post box
This is the size of the box where you write your posts. If you click on ‘Add New’ in the Posts section you will see the rich text box, this is what we can change here. The default size is 10 lines. Personally I find either 10 lines or 15 lines a good size any bigger and you have to do a bit of scrolling down to see the other boxes. Try different sizes and see what works best for you.

Formatting
There are two options here, the first is ‘Convert emoticons like : - ) and : - P to graphics on display’. This means instead of text smileys WordPress will convert them into their graphic equivalents like this .

The second option ‘WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically’ means that anything you write in your posts will be converted to valid XHTML code automatically. This can cause problems with some plugins but I suggest trying it and if it does cause problems then either do not use that plugin or turn this feature off.

Default Post Category
If you do not select a category when writing a post this is the category it will be assigned to. If you use a specific category most of the time you can set it to that here saving yourself some time when writing posts.

Default Link Category
The category here is similar to the Default Post Category above but it handles links you create. The default is Blogroll, you can create new Link Categories in the Links section.

Press This
This is a little bookmarklet (a small application that runs in your browser) used for grabbing bits of web pages that you can then paste into your posts.

Post via e-mail
If you want to be able to post to your website via email you will need to set this up. If you will not be posting via email just leave this as is. If you will be using it the first thing to do is set up a secret email account as anything set to this email will be published to your site.

Remote Publishing
A better option I believe than using the Post Via Email is to use the Remore Publishing. This lets you use desktop blogging clients like Windows Live Writer to write posts and publish them from your desktop. See the documentation for the blogging client you will be using to find out which protocol you will need.

Update Services
When you publish a post WordPress can automatically notify the update services you put here. By default there is http://rpc.pingomatic.com/. You can leave this as it is or you can add more.

Here is a list of update services you can use.

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/