You have installed a new site. Here’s a list of things that you should do right away.

1. Create user(s)
2. Install additional themes
3. License your premium themes and plugins.
4. Set up a backup schedule.

Create user(s)

The site comes with the following users:

• dbrown
  Denny’s credentials. Leave this user in place if you want us to help.
• xws
  Expert Web Support credetials. Leave this user in place if you want us to help.

Create additional users for your site.

Install additional themes

If you know which Builder Child themes you want to install, install them now.

License your premium themes and plugins

Some of the resources on the starter site are premium (i.e. paid for). Expert Web Support (XWS) has a developer license for many of these. To license these, you need the appropriate developer credentials. So this must be done by an XWS staff member, or someone needs to give you the credentials you need.

• Settings > iThemes licensing
  You need the iThemes credentials for these.
  You can license all of the iThemes resources on this page.
• Gravity Forms: If this has been installed, it needs to be licensed. It is not in the standard starter site installation.
• Plugins > Installed plugins
  Activate Akismet. (This is a plugin that combats comment spam.)
  You’ll see a link to “Activate your Akismet Account”. Chase that for instructions on creating an API key at WordPress.com.

Set up a backup schedule

You definitely want to back up your site regularly. XWS has a cloud storage service from iThemes. By backing up to “My Stash”, you will have a backup in the cloud. We recommend at least weekly database backups and monthly full backups.

• BackupBuddy > Schedules
• Create a Weekly DB backup.
  Set the parameters accordingly. Set a destination = “My Stash”. Select “Delete local backup after remote send success” and “Enable schedule to run”.
• Create a Monthly Full backup.

Check basic settings

Check these settings. Some of the defaults will work for your new site. Others are specific to your site and you should decide how you want to set them.

1. Settings > General
   Set the Site name and Tagline to something appropriate to your site.
   Change the email address to be where you want notifications from WordPress to go.
2. Settings > Permalinks
   The default setting is my recommendation. But you should “Save Changes” even if you want to keep the setting. This makes sure that your .htaccess file is initialized properly.
3. Settings > Reading
   Decide whether to turn on search engines or not. The default starter site is “No”.  I recommend turning these on when the site is somewhat presentable.
4. Settings > Discussion
   Defaults are decent. Check them out to see if you want to change anything.
5. Explore additional settings to see what’s there.