We just launched a new blog recently and when checking the Jetpack stats, I noticed something seemed odd. According to my quick stats view it was already a new day. Now, I was pretty sure that it was only late in the day and I had not actually worked through the night. Nope, I really love my sleep.
This is when I knew that I had forgotten to make a change inside of my WordPress General Settings.
Thankfully this was an easy thing to fix and the world was not going to end because I hadn't already done it.
How do you get to your WordPress General Settings?
Step 1: Log into your WordPress dashboard
Step 2: Scroll down and click on Settings (on the left)
What should you change in your General Settings?
Check your Site Title
Generally speaking this will be the name of your blog or your business.
Tagline
You want to keep this short, as a tagline should be, but do try and work in a keyword.
WordPress Address and Site Address
If for some reason this is different then you what expected, you may have a real problem. This is extremely rare but if that is the case, contact your web developer right away. It should be your domain name.
Timezone
This was my problem child because it was set to a random UTC time zone. When you select the down arrow to set the time zone, there will be a ton of choices. My tip to you is to start typing in the time zone that you are in and it will jump to it or something close.
Why is this important?
If you are scheduling post to release in the future at a specific time, it will be according to this timezone setting. Also, if you are using the Jetpack analytics tool, the days start and stop according to this setting.
These are not critical issues that will keep your blog from working but they sure may cause some confusion.
There are a few other settings that you may want to take a look at such as date and time format but I will leave those for you to decide. WordPress is an extremely powerful platform and is built to make our lives easier. We just have to remember to click the right settings.