Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 1

Domain & Host Registration, WordPress Installation, Email & SSL Setup

I. Registrar (Namecheap.com)

1. Set up account & contact information.
2. Purchased domain name (AncientGreekKeyboard.com).
3. Turned off Parking Page.

II. Hosting Company (SiteGround.com)

1. Set up account & contact information.
2. Set up cPanel & FTP passwords.
3. Located DNS records for hosted site.

III. Registrar

1. Pasted DNS address from the hosting company into the Custom DNS nameservers.
2. Clicked checkmark to save the new DNS addresses.

IV. Hosting Company

1. Reviewed online directions for installing WordPress manually.
2. Accessed cPanel.
3. Downloaded WordPress installation ZIP file. Unzipped it.
4. Set up WordPress database & recorded database credentials.
5. Added these credentials to WP-CONFIG.PHP and saved the file.
6. Uploaded WordPress files & folders to Host.
7. Manually installed WordPress.
8. Logged into WordPress.
9. Installed & activated the Coming Soon plugin.
10. Set up email accounts on cPanel.
    1. Accessed cPanel.
    2. Mail > Email Accounts
    3. Set up email address, password, size.
    4. Created email account.
    5. Beside new account, clicked More > Access Webmail.
    6. Chose Default Webmail Application.
    7. Sent email configuration information to a different email address.
    8. Tested email to make sure it was working correctly.
11. Set up SSL on WordPress
    1. Activated SSL with “Let’s Encrypt” on cPanel.
    2. Forced SSL login via code in WP-CONFIG.PHP.
    3. Uploaded WP-CONFIG.PHP.
    4. Logged into WP and updated WordPress Address (URL) & Site Address (URL) to HTTPS.
    5. Installed & activated Velvet Blues Update URLs plugin.
    6. Clicked “UPDATE URLS” link & updated links on WP from HTTP to HTTPS.
    7. Used HTACCESS to redirect HTTP to HTTPS.
    8. Verified Permalinks were set to HTTPS & were using the desired format.
    9. Verified that HTTP links on the site were correctly redirecting to HTTPS.
    10. Manually updated STYLE.CSS so that background images loaded from HTTPS rather than the development site (Did this on Day 2).

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UPDATE: In hindsight, the following actions should have been performed on this day:

1. HTACCESS should have been set at this point to deny access to the site to everyone but myself until the the site was ready to go live.
2. The WWW version of the site should have been created instead of the non-WWW version. (The site must be WWW if it is ever configured for Cloudflare.)

Other posts in this series:

1. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 1
2. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 2
3. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 3
4. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 4
5. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 5
6. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 6
7. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 7
8. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 8: (Site brought live)
9. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 2
10. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 3
11. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 4
12. Week 5: Speed optimization tests
13. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 6
14. How to convert a non-WWW WordPress site to WWW