WordPress install and website setup guide

WordPress install

This is a step by step guide that we use to set up our “basic” WordPress Sites for Dvize clients that includes client services as well as the actual install. We place a major emphasis on Search Engine Optimisation during this process.

This guide is designed to be used along side the WordPress installation instructions. Different hosting environments may vary this information.

Client Preparation

• Review the ATDW Ekit (designed for tourism operators, but a great guide for any organisation) and other website guides
• Research their industry and general sites. produce a list of websites that they like and why
• Complete our client brief (available soon under creative commons)
• List Keywords
• Supply existing content including images. SnailMail if necessary

Planning

This section is too complex to detail in this guide, so here is a brief list

• Research
• Strategy
• Ongoing management plan
• Design and branding
• Outline any custom development required
• Identify external services to be integrated
• Content planning
• Sitemap

Initial Setup

• Setup a hosting account. Ideally your host allows you to set up a staging area which will allow you to work on your site at a private address before you finish the site and put it live. Our list of green hosting companies
• Create a MySQL database (on your hosting account)
• Set up Google Analytics account

WordPress Installation

Always download the latest versions of WordPress, themes and plug-ins as new versions are released regularly.More information can be found here: WordPress installation instructions

• Download WordPress and uncompress the zip file to your PC
• Download a WordPress theme (uncompress) and add to the “/wp-content/themes/” folder. Recommended theme sites | Our favourite theme
• Download required plugins (uncompress) and add to the “/wp-content/plugins/” folder. Recommended Plug-ins
  • For this install we will be using “cformsII”, “WP-DB-Backup”, “Google XML Sitemaps”, “HeadSpace 2 “, “Google Analytics for WordPress” (some only work for WP v2)
• Create a directory (folder) named “uploads” in the directory “/wp-content/”
• Rename “WordPress-config-sample.php” to “WordPress-config.php”
• Open “WordPress-config.php” (in a text editor) and add database your details (DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD and [depending on your host DB_HOST]
• Upload (using FTP or SFTP) all the contents of the WordPress folder to your server where you want your site to be. This will take awhile depending on your connection. On my connection it takes 45 minutes.
• Set the permissions of your “/wp-content/uploads/” to “777″
• Go to installation URL (ie the location of your new WordPress site [www.yourdomain.com]) in your browser and follow complete the “5 minute” WordPress installation. (untick “Allow my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati.”)

WordPress Configuration

• Login to wordpress [www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin])
• Click the link in red at the top “Yes, Take me to my profile page” and update your password (WP v2 only)
• Go to “Settings > Permalink” and select “Month and name”
• Go to “Appearance >Themes” and activate your chosen theme
• Go to “Plugins” and activate “cformsII”, “WP-DB-Backup” and “HeadSpace 2″
• If you want to turn comments OFF
  • Go to ” Settings > Discussion”
  • Untick “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)” and untick “Allow people to post comments on new articles”
• If you want to turn comments ON
  • Go to ” Settings > Discussion”
  • Adjust the settings your would like
  • Go to “Plugins” and activate “Akismet” (this is an essential spam filter)
  • Follow the prompts and add your “WordPress.com API key “
• To create a static page for your homepage (by default your blog feed is displayed as your home page)
  • Go to “Pages > Add page “
  • Name the page your number one keyword (or homepage)
  • Go to “Settings > Reading “
  • Select “Static page” and select the page you just created from the dropdown
  • Repeat this process if you want to move your blog to another location other than your home page. When you choose a page to be you blog page, WordPress replaces the static page with your blog feed.
• Add a contact form.
  • Go to “cformsII”
  • Configure the form to your needs. Ensure the email address is correct in “Admin Email Message Options”
  • Go to “Pages > Add page “
  • Name the page “contact” or similar
  • Click on the “cforms” button in your page editor (in Visual mode) and insert your form
  • Save the page and test the form to ensure you are recieving email
• Go to “Users > Add new”. Set up the clients account so they don’t override the password for the admin account
  • Login as the clients user and go to “Dashboard > Screen Options (top right)” and untick unnessasary items such as “Other WordPress News”

Content

• Train client on how to use WordPress.
• Content “workbee” (or workshop). We book a day to work our client while we are adding content. The client needs to have all content ready before the day. The benefits of adding all the content in one day are:
  • Client gets excellent customer support as we are focused on the clients content and website. The client is empowered to guide the content process.
  • Client is trained in producing high standard content and transferring this into their website
  • Client gets the website up fast
  • Client understands the time required to manage content (allows for future budget planning and understands why we charge extra for ongoing content management)
  • We reduce the time (and client costs) required for adding the content. Adding content slowly over a period of time (drip feeding) is very time intensive when added up and adds substantially to the cost of the site.
• Create pages from your sitemap
• Set up required widgets – Control how widgets display using widget logic.
• process images and other media (this requires it own detail guide)
• Add content
• Format and tidy content
• To back up your database (do this regualarly, especially after doing work)
  • Go to “Tools > Backup”
  • Tick all the options to backup
  • Download it to your desktop

Optimise content for Search engines

Start by understanding how SEO works:

• Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization
• Google Search Engine Ranking Factors – 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization

Optimse your content for your keywords

• Confirm your list of keywords and phases. Make them relevant to key search phrases for target audience.
• Go to “Settings > Headspace” , click the “Page Modules” Tab
  • Drag “Tags”, “Page Title”, “Keywords”, “Page description” to “Simple” (this will then display these settings on each page)
• For each page that your are optimising for, add the keys words. You need to balance good communication with your human readers with good indexing by robots such as Google.
  • The page title is the most important Field to get right. WP will automaticaly write the title as the H1, page URL, and page title. These are the three most important tags for SEO. You can overide this with Headspace. Ensure H1 relates to page title and URL.
  • Optimise the subheadings (H2,H3) in the page with keywords. Ensure subheadings are prioritised based on relevance to page title.
• Description, content, internal links, alt tags, image names, keywords must relate to page title and theme of page.
• Internal linking – ensure pages are linked to other relevant internal pages assist robot crawl and usability
• Metatags. Make sure site has meta tags for: title, description, keywords, date created, date modified (Autogeneration of the dates needs to be coded into the template)
• Content – ensure content includes keywords and phrases relevant to page title through out.
• If you are upgrading from an existing site, you will need to redirect the old pages (URLs) to your new ones. The redirection plugin is great for this.

Browser Testing

Make sure your website works in all the popular browsers, operating systems, monitors (colours and size) and now on smart phones. Check the browser Stats:

• W3 schools
• W3 counter
• Wikipedia

Were currently test the following browsers included in our basic service: Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, IE 7, IE 8, IE 6 (we are likely to start charging to support this as it is such a bad browser. At 10% of market share this still needs to be supported). We charge extra to support other browsers. These tools can help with testing:

• browsershots
• browsercam

Put the Site live

If you are using a staging area. If not the site will already be live

• Client signs off that is ready to go live
• Download and backup clients existing site
• Setup client emails
• Ensure you have redirected the old pages (URLs) to your new ones. The redirection plugin is great for this.
• Delegate the domain name (DNS) to your staging area
• Go to “plugins” and activate “Google Analytics” plugin
  • add the api details
• Go to “cformsII > Admin Email Message Options” and Add the clients email
• Confirm client is receiving email from Cforms
• Go to “Settings > Privacy” and select “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati) and archivers”
• Go to “Plugins” and activate “XML Sitemap Generator”
• Go to “Settings > XML Sitemap”
  • If there is an error, it is likely to be permissions.
  • Configure the settings. Make sure your site is set to “notify” the search engines

Client Handover

• Train client on how to use on Google Analytics
• Ensure the client understands your support system and services

Register Site and Back-linking

Register your site on local and industry directories as well as asking as many related sites to link to you (try getting them to use your key words in the link). Also register the site with these search engines and directories:

• google
• bing
• yahoo
• alexia
• dmoz

Finish Project

• Client signs off that is finished
• Archive
  • Clients old site
  • Download all files from FTP (ie WordPress and content)
  • Latest backup of the WordPress Database
  • A static version of the site (also known as siteripping. Search for software this do this)
  • Working files, documents etc etc
• Invoice the client
• Have a beer

Use and remix as you want but please credit the work to
Dvize Creative and link back to this page:
http://www.dvize.com/wordpress-install-and-website-setup-guide/

This summary represents a lot of our commercial process and IP. If you are using this in a commercial context, please donate.