The WordPress reading settings configure aspects on how end users see your site. These settings don't affect your theme, but they do allow you to turn your site from a regular blog to a full website.

By default the front page of your WordPress site is a collection of your latest blogs. Through the reading settings you can choose to pick a static page for your front page. Note: there must be a page created in order to enable these options. When a static front page is chosen any visitor who reaches your site will see that page.

Maybe you want a static front page but still want blog functionality, such as company news or updates. Create a new page and set it as the posts page. Any content in the page will not be displayed but the list of your blogs will.

Example:  Company A wants http://companya.com to show a descriptive text about the company, but also use blogs for company news updates. By setting a static front page, http://companya.com will display that selected page content. Then, for example, http://companya.com/blog will link to the "Blog" page which is set as the Posts page and display all posts.

By default WordPress will display 10 blog posts on the home page and 10 blog posts in your syndication (RSS) feed. On glamanate.com I have it set to three posts to keep the page short. These values can be adjusted to whichever suites your needs. You can also choose whether the blog posts display the full posts text or a shortened summary. Note: this functionality works only if your theme respects the option - most do, and of course the default WordPress themes do. The final option, Search Engine Visibility, allows you to "hide" your website from being indexed on search engines. Chances are you just read that and wondered why anyone would want to do that, after all the point of a website to get get found on the web. There can be different uses, but most often it can be used to hide a "test site" used to try out new updates before put on the live version of a website.