Site Settings

Access Your General Settings

To visit the General Settings:

  1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
  2. On the left side, click on Settings near the bottom

The General Settings page will load first. On the left side, you can then navigate to other settings areas:

Click the links above to view our guide to each settings screen.

Settings, with options expanded for General, Writing, Reading, and more.

Site Title

Your Site title will also appear in your website’s dashboard and as the sender’s name when your subscribers receive email notifications when you publish a post.

Using the Site Title and Site Tagline blocks, you can also display the site title and tagline across other parts of your website.

Your site’s title can be anything you’d like to describe your site. It doesn’t have to be the same as your site’s address or your account’s username. It’s recommended to use a cleaned-up version of your address (e.g., myawesomesite can become My Awesome Site) or change it to whatever best reflects your site’s personality and topic succinctly.

The Site tagline is a short description or catchy phrase to describe what your site is about and can be beneficial for SEO.

To change your site’s title or tagline:

  1. Visit your dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Settings → General.
  3. Type the new title and tagline in the boxes provided.
  4. Click the “Save settings” button to commit the change.

You can change these texts as often as you would like. Changing your site title does not change your site address or your domain.

Site Icon

The Site Icon is a small image that is visible next to the site title on the browser tab:

Arrows point to the site icon in the browser tab.

 

The Site Icon appears in the browser tab and address bar

See our Add a Site Icon guide to learn how to change the site icon and recommended image guidelines.

Language

The Language setting controls your site’s default language as seen by the public. It sets the language used for certain text elements of your site that you cannot edit directly, e.g., the comments form and some built-in buttons.

The language setting, with English selected.

Each site has its own language setting, so if you have multiple sites associated with your account, each one can have a different language.

The language setting will not translate the text you have written on your site. See options for creating a multi-language site here.

If you select an RTL language (for example, Hebrew), the theme’s layout will mirror itself so that the text can be read properly from right to left.

You can help translate WordPress.com themes into more than 100 languages. Learn how to get started on our translation portal site.

You can also change your Interface Language, which is the language used for your WordPress.com dashboard (not visible to the public.) This is a separate setting from your site’s language.

Timezone

Set your site’s timezone to the timezone you are based in to ensure scheduled posts and pages are published at your desired time. Using the dropdown, you can select your closest city or choose a specific UTC offset.

Site timezone setting dropdown.

Privacy

The Privacy settings control who can and cannot view your site:

Site privacy options.

See our Privacy Settings guide to learn what each option means for your site.