You might think, "All these other things I've been doing so far at the Administration Screens have involved 'Settings'. Are these 'Settings' any different?" The answer would be, "Yes." All the settings you've encountered in the other Administration Screens have dealt with very specific parts of your site, or have been of limited scope (only applying to one Category, for example). In the Settings Administration Screen are all of the settings that define your blog as a whole: settings which determine how your site behaves, how you interact with your site, and how the rest of the world interacts with your site.
The following Screens control these settings.
You might think, "All these other things I've been doing so far at the Administration Screens have involved 'Settings'. Are these 'Settings' any different?" The answer would be, "Yes." All the settings you've encountered in the other Administration Screens have dealt with very specific parts of your site, or have been of limited scope (only applying to one Category, for example). In the Settings Administration Screen are all of the settings that define your blog as a whole: settings which determine how your site behaves, how you interact with your site, and how the rest of the world interacts with your site.
The following Screens control these settings.
The Settings General Screen is the default Screen in the Settings Administration Screen and controls some of the most basic configuration settings for your site: your site's title and location, who may register an account at your blog, and how dates and times are calculated and displayed.
Using the Settings Writing Screen, you can control the interface with which you write new posts. These settings control the size of the 'post box' in the Add New Post Screen, the default Category, the default Link Category, the default Post Format, the default image sizes, and the optional Post via e-mail feature.
The settings in the Settings Reading Screen are few in number, but still important. You can decide if you want posts, or a "static" Page, displayed as your blog's front (main) page. You can also adjust how many posts are displayed on that main page. In addition, you can adjust syndication feed features to determine how the information from your site is sent to a reader's web browser or other applications.
The Settings Discussion Screen allows you to control settings concerning incoming and outgoing comments, pingbacks and trackbacks. You can also control from this Screen the circumstances under which your blog sends you e-mail notifying you about the goings on at your site, and you can decide if your blog should show Avatars and their ratings.
The Settings Media Screen allows you to determine where images, documents, and other media files will be linked to when inserted into the body of a post and to specify the maximum dimensions in pixels to use when inserting an image into the body of a post.
As of 3.5, the Settings Privacy Screen has been removed and the Search Engine Visibility option has been moved to the Settings Reading Screen.
For a nice introduction to Permalinks, check out the Pretty Permalinks section of Introduction to Blogging. But briefly, and to quote the Settings Permalinks Screen itself:
By default, WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them; however, WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links.
The Settings Permalinks Screen controls how that custom URL structure is defined. For a more in depth description of the way this structure is specified, see the Using Permalinks article.
Using the Settings Writing Screen, you can control the interface with which you write new posts. These settings control the size of the 'post box' in the Add New Post Screen, the default Category, the default Link Category, the default Post Format, the default image sizes, and the optional Post via e-mail feature.
The settings in the Settings Reading Screen are few in number, but still important. You can decide if you want posts, or a "static" Page, displayed as your blog's front (main) page. You can also adjust how many posts are displayed on that main page. In addition, you can adjust syndication feed features to determine how the information from your site is sent to a reader's web browser or other applications.
The Settings Discussion Screen allows you to control settings concerning incoming and outgoing comments, pingbacks and trackbacks. You can also control from this Screen the circumstances under which your blog sends you e-mail notifying you about the goings on at your site, and you can decide if your blog should show Avatars and their ratings.
The Settings Media Screen allows you to determine where images, documents, and other media files will be linked to when inserted into the body of a post and to specify the maximum dimensions in pixels to use when inserting an image into the body of a post.
As of 3.5, the Settings Privacy Screen has been removed and the Search Engine Visibility option has been moved to the Settings Reading Screen.
For a nice introduction to Permalinks, check out the Pretty Permalinks section of Introduction to Blogging. But briefly, and to quote the Settings Permalinks Screen itself:
By default, WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them; however, WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links.
The Settings Permalinks Screen controls how that custom URL structure is defined. For a more in depth description of the way this structure is specified, see the Using Permalinks article.