I always set this stuff up like this:
- General
- Site title/tagline
- Writing
- Default Post category – change name from default to (something with relevant keywords in it)
Edit this in Posts->Categories - Reading
- Front page displays “static page”
- Create 2 new blank pages called “home” and “blog” – set these two ~
- Discussion
- Disable the 2 emailers when people comment
- Permalinks
- Custom
- /%category%/%postname%/