WordPress Website Setup

This is how I setup my WordPress websites. This is based upon my experience with WordPress development and various plugins, utilities, and hosting environments. I select hosting, software, and content development techniques that provide an optimal environment for a fast website with great potential for SEO

Everything starts with the choice of your hosting provider. A hosting server is the foundation of your website. If you throw your website on cheap Godaddy hosting that was created to host millions of websites, you’ve shot yourself in the foot. I’m really not trying to bash Godaddy. I use Godaddy for all my domain registrations. Godaddy is the best domain registrar in the industry, hands down!

But domain registration is their core service. That is what they are really, really good at. Website hosting at Godaddy is merely a ‘convenience service’. So you can connect low-cost hosting to your domain without having to go anywhere else. It’s a great service for enthusiast websites. However, Godaddy hosting is not a good service for a business website.

This is not an article about hosting, and I don’t want to dwell on that. Hosting by itself is a long, comprehensive discussion that I will write a post about in the future. So I’m not going to ramble on anymore about hosting. Let’s just be clear to stay away from budget hosts like Godaddy, Hostgator, etc., and look at the mid to higher range hosting such as WP-Engine, Kinsta, etc.

Once you have WordPress installed on your hosting, it’s time to set it up.

WordPress General Settings

Specify your WordPress identity and preferences

  • General
    • Site Name
    • Site Description
    • Site URL, WordPress URL
    • Time Zone
  • Reading
    • Discourage Search Engines
    • Static page to : Home
    • For each post: Summary
  • Discussion
    • disable commenting and pingbacks
  • Permalinks
    • set to Post Name

Privacy Page:

  • Setup a Privacy Page if you need to comply with European and/or California privacy laws.
    Here is ‘boiler plate’ privacy page content that will help personal and small business websites comply with privacy laws.
  • Cookie Policy page. Copy from ZWeb Docs > Cookie Policy Template.
    Again, here is ‘boiler plate’ cookie policy page content that will help personal and small business websites comply with privacy laws such as Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA.

Themes

  • Genesis
  • Genesis Sample Theme (set active
  • Settings: Genesis > Theme Settings
    • Site Layout (Full Width)
    • Breadcrumbs > (Posts page, Single Posts, Pages, Archives)
    • Comments and Trackbacks: disable
    • Singular Content > (Show Featured Images on Posts, delete meta shortcodes)
    • Content Archives > (Limit=255, Display Featured Image= No, Featured Image Alignment: left)
    • Footer > replace code with GitHub code: snippets-html/genesis-footer-copyright
  • replace Sample Theme files with GitHub.com/rooksads
    • Create FTP user on WPEngine, Login FileZilla
    • copy styles.css from Github and replace
    • copy functions.php from Github and replace

Create Header widget

  • copy HTML code from GitHub: snippets-html/header-phone.html
  • paste into Widgets > Header Right > Custom HTML widget
  • replace placeholder phone numbers with client numbers.

Create Header Search widget

Setup Main Menu

  • Create Main Menu
  • Display Location: Header Menu
  • Add Home page

Plugins

  • Gravity Forms : 7104b4dce8104a088f05675bc3c5cbb5
  • Gravity Forms Mailgun: a468e8fe37619b4eaeb07910ff78bcb0-0d2e38f7-bb6638e6
  • Gravity Forms ZeroSpam
  • Yoast
  • Yoast Premium (if applicable)
  • Imagify : e43ed0d884185c104f21ce9b0c7e5ab9722d2892
  • Fonts Plugin
  • Simple Social Icons
  • Jobs for WordPress (if applicable)
  • CleanTalk
  • WP SEO Structured Data Schema (if Yoast SEO Local is not subscribed)
  • Display Featured Image for Genesis
  • Genesis Grid
  • Export media with selected content (for rebuilds)
  • Smash Balloon Instagram Feed
  • Prevent Browser Caching
  • Gutenburg Blocks
    Disable all blocks in settings (to be enabled as needed)
    • Genesis Pro (Atomic Blocks on non-WPEngine sites)
    • UAG Ultimate Addons for Gutenburg ( Post Carousel only )
    • Kadence Blocks (disable Testimonials, Post Carousel)
    • Editors Kit
    • Ultimate Blocks ( Review only )
    • Gutenator
  • Create Users
    • Caylie, Drew, Sam

Sample Blog

  • Create 2 sample blog posts
    • Lipsum content
    • Featured image

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