Section 4: Setup your Church WordPress Website Dashboard
Before you begin setting up the rest of your website with a WordPress Theme Design and Plugins, you will want to make a couple of quick adjustments to your WordPress Dashboard.
You can also find many, but not all, of these customization options by going to “Appearance” then “Customize” and it should open up a customization area and a preview box showing your site so you can see the changes you are making before saving them.
There are many things you could change, but the ones below are definitely important and found in the “Settings” Section located in the left-hand sidebar of your dashboard typically toward the bottom.
General Settings:
– Change the Site Title and Tagline to match your Church.
– Change the email address to one you use frequently.
– Change the date and time format to the way you would like it displayed.
Reading Settings: Enable Search Engine Visibility
If it is still going to be awhile before you create most of your content, then you may not want Search Engines crawling your half created site until you are completely ready.
But, if you are working diligently to launch your website quickly, make sure you do NOT discourage Search Engines from crawling your site. You want to make sure you are able to be found by them by enabling Search Engine Visibility in this section of the settings.
Permalink Settings:
This is the place where you choose how your page and post links look, and what your links will include. I would suggest using the “Custom Structure” option, then copy and paste this into the blank and save it to add the post Category and Name to the links /%category%/%postname%/
Delete the Preloaded Content
Typically there is at least one Page, Post and Comment that are already set up in the WordPress installation. You will want to look for those and delete them.
Run Initial WordPress Updates
WordPress is continually updating the software, and has a built-in automatic way to complete the updates. In addition to the software, you will also find that Themes and Plugin also need to be updated.
At the end of this Guide we will look updates in a little more detail. But, when you are starting with a fresh installation it is ok to go ahead and immediately run any updates that are needed without concern that it will cause issues with your website.
To run updates, go to “Dashboard” in the left sidebar of the WordPress Dashboard, then click “Updates”.
Run all updates that it shows need to be completed. It will typically take a few seconds to a minute to complete each update. After finishing each update, go back to the “Dashboard” and “Updates” to run the next one until all are finished.
Click the “Ready to Launch” Button
Your site will display a temporary page at first. Click the button to get rid of the “Coming Soon” page as soon as you are ready. This link is toward the top as show by the arrow on the right in the graphic above.
Get the iThemes WordPress Checklist
iThemes is the company who has created the WordPress Security Plugin we will recommend later in this guide. But, they have also created an excellent free downloadable book resource titled “The Essential WordPress Website Launch Checklist”.
Download the Checklist here…
www.ithemes.com/2014/10/29/checklist-11-things-every-new-wordpress-install
>> Go to Section 5: HOW TO FIND AND INSTALL WORDPRESS PLUGINS