New WordPress Website Launch – Offsite Tasks part 1 / WordPress

While WordPress and other content management systems makes launching a new website much easier compared to before, it’s still not an easy thing to do. This is especially true if you don’t have any programming knowledge and can’t afford to do web development either. There are so many things to pay attention to that even experienced developers can easily forget something important.

this paragraph there are two parts: the first one in detail off-site duties (you do in addition to the WordPress admin) & the second one shows on-site duty (which you do from the WordPress admin).

Based on the type of website, for example, there may be other tasks, if you want an eCommerce store these two checklists will not be enough. However, they do contain All basic pre-launch quests Recommended for any new WordPress site.

1. Register a domain name

First of all, you will need a available domain names. Hosting providers that allow you register a new domain name at the same time you buy a hosting plan. In most cases, this is the best option for a new website.

However, you can alsosearch an existing domain name from another domain registrar. Or, if you want to host your domain name at another registrar, you can also update your nameservers alone.

2. Buy a hosting plan

When you buy a hosting plan, you basically rent hosting for your website on a server owned and maintained by the hosting company. The host also provides many related services to help you manage your site, it’s worth browsing these carefully before choosing a plan.

For most new WordPress sites, a Linux plan on a shared server would be the best choice.

After you purchase the hosting plan, you can access your cPanela control panel where you can manage your hosting account, access your database, create email accounts, and perform other website related tasks.

3. Install WordPress

You need to Install WordPress software on your website. Most hosting providers offer an automatic installer, which means you can run the WordPress auto-installer at the same time you buy your hosting package.

If you don’t want to use the automatic installer, you can also install WordPress through the Softaculous app installer which you can find in your cPanel dashboard. You can install several different software with Softaculous. You need to choose WordPress And follow the instructions.

4. Install SSL Certificate

Although it is not a requirement to have SSL certificate on your site, it is highly recommended to use one. First, for the sake of users trust a more secure siteand also because browsers have started repel unencrypted sites.

Having an SSL certificate installed on your website means it will use secure HTTPS protocol instead of HTTP. So your URL will be https://www.yoursite.com instead of http://www.yoursite.com.

Fortunately, these days most hosting providers offer you a Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate, which is usually enough for smaller sites. You can install/manage it from Bảo mật> SSL / TLS menu in your cPanel.

5. Create an email account

Maybe you will need at least one email address for your WordPress site for admin purposes, for example to receive security notices. Although you can also use a third-party email providerssuch as a Gmail or Yahoo address, it’s worth considering setting up an email address on your own domain name.

To do so, navigate to Email> Tài khoản email menu in your cPanel and Fill in the “Add email account” form.

Arrive access your new email addressscroll down on the same page where you created the email account, click the More button and select “Access webmail” option.

Your mailbox have a separate URL Also, it’s usually http://webmail.yoursite.com / or http://yoursite.com/webmail/. You can see it in the URL bar after you log into your account. If you just want to check your email, you can quickly access your mailbox from this URL, you do not need to log in to cPanel.

6. Set up an FTP connection

To access files stored on your server, you will need a FTP connect. Since WordPress is an advanced content management system, you can perform most tasks from its dashboard, however sometimes you may need to upload or download files or folders to or from the server.

For instance, when a broken plugin locks you out of the WP admin, the easiest thing you can do is disable the plugin on the server. Another use case is when you want modify your .htaccess or wp-config fileas these configuration files are not available from the WP admin.

To access your website via FTP, you need an FTP account. Hosting accounts usually come with two Pre-installed special FTP account, one for root access and one for logs. You can access the FTP Account settings page by clicking Tệp> Tài khoản FTP menu in your cPanel.

In many cases it is enough to use root account (“example” on the screenshot above), however note that the root account have access to all your files. If you have non-admin users who have to access the server for some reason you can create restricted FTP accounts for them they can access the folders they need (but not more). You can create these additional FTP accounts on the same site.

If you click on the “Configure FTP client” option, it opens a drop-down tab where you get all the data you need FTP client configuration. For example, my hosting provider provides configuration files for three different FTP clients: FileZilla Client, CoreFTP and Cyberduck.

You need to install one of these FTP client software exclusively on your computer and follow instructions (can be found on this screen below the configuration files).

You can use SFTP instead of FTP as well. SFTP send your files encrypted between the server and your computer. It is a Safer solution but also harder to set up (you need to generate a security key).

After you connect your server via FTP, you will find your WordPress installation inside công khai category.

7. Register your website with search engines

If you want your website present on search enginesyou need to subscribe them. You can submit it to Google at Google Webmaster Tools and to Bing and Yahoo at Bing Webmaster Tools. Some people just register their sites with Google, however there are some good arguments for not skipping Bing Webmaster Tools.

To use Google Webmaster Tools, you need a Google account, however you can use an existing one. Log in to the website and on the home screen, Click on the “Add a property” button and enter the URL of your website.

Friend need verification that the site belongs to you. Do like that, HTML verification file download Google gives you and upload it via FTP to your server into the công khai category. When done, click on the “Verify” button.

For the best search results, it’s worth adding the following four versions of your URL:

1. http://www.yoursite.com
2. http://yoursite.com
3. https://www.yoursite.com
4. https://yoursite.com

Add all of them as separate attributesfinal set your preferred version follow these instructions If you use an SSL certificate, select one of the HTTPS URLs.

Registering your site with Bing Webmaster Tools works similarly. Friend need a Microsoft accountthen you log in to Bing Webmaster Tools, add the URL of your site and upload a verification file to your server via FTP. Note that the Bing verification file is not HTML but an XML file.

8. Set up a Google Analytics account

Your website will need some kind of analysis as well so you can understand your traffic better. Although there are a number of web analytics tools, the biggest being Google Analytics, many websites use more than an analysis tool.

To use Google Analytics with WordPress, you will need a plugin (see it in the second part of this article). But first, you need to create your account. It is best if you use same Google account you use for Google Webmaster Tools, as you can link these two services.

In your Google Analytics Dashboard you can see all kinds of statistics, based on metrics like real-time user presence, traffic sources, referrals, countries, and others. You can also do a ton more configurations to make statistics give you the information you need.

Off-site duties

In this article, I have shown most important off-site tasks you need to do when you launch a new WordPress site, however it is Not a comprehensive list. In your cPanel you will find several other options that you can use to successfully manage your website. It’s always depends on the hosting provider what features they offer to their users. Some options will Varies from supplier to supplierhowever there are many common people.

Perhaps the most important off-site mission not detailed in this article is reliable backup job scheduling. Most hosting providers have backup management tooland some of them even do automatic backup Feasibility. Features are highly dependent on your hosting account type. Note that backups can be done both from cPanel and with WordPress pluginchoose the solution that suits you best (don’t forget it).