WordPress installs in a couple of minutes from the Enhance control panel, and the built-in WordPress Toolkit keeps updates, plugins and themes in one place afterwards. This guide covers the install itself and the settings we recommend for every new site.
Moving an existing site? Don’t reinstall it from scratch. Our team migrates WordPress sites to Web7 for free. Just open a support ticket.
Before you start #
- The website already exists in Enhance. If not, see Getting started with your Web7 VPS.
- Your domain points at your VPS, or you’re happy to finish setup on a temporary address first.
- You’ve picked an admin username that isn’t
admin. It’s the first name every bot tries.
1. Start the WordPress install #
In Enhance, open Websites, select the site, and choose to install WordPress from its apps section. Enhance creates the database, database user and configuration file for you, so there’s nothing to set up by hand.
2. Fill in the details #
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Domain | The website you’re installing on. |
| Path | Leave blank to install at the root (example.com). Use a folder name only if WordPress should live at something like example.com/blog. |
| Site title | Your site’s name. You can change it later in WordPress. |
| Admin username | Something unique, not admin, administrator or your domain name. |
| Admin password | A long, random password from your password manager. |
| Admin email | An inbox you check. WordPress sends password resets and security notices here. |
Start the install. It usually finishes in under a minute.
3. Check that HTTPS works #
Once your domain points at the server, a free Let’s Encrypt certificate is issued and renewed automatically. Visit https:// followed by your domain and look for the padlock.
If you use Cloudflare, keep the DNS records set to DNS only until the certificate is issued, then switch them to Proxied. The Cloudflare guide explains why.
4. Log in to WordPress #
Go to https://example.com/wp-admin/ (with your own domain) and sign in with the admin details from step 2. You can also open WordPress from the WordPress Toolkit in Enhance.
5. Five settings to change on day one #
- Permalinks. Go to Settings → Permalinks and choose Post name for clean URLs like
example.com/about-us/. - Time zone. Set it under Settings → General so scheduled posts and logs use your local time.
- Clear out the samples. Delete the “Hello world!” post, the sample page, and any themes and plugins you won’t use. Inactive plugins are still code that can be attacked.
- Two-factor authentication. Add a 2FA plugin and require it for every account that can publish or install plugins.
- Updates. Turn on automatic updates for plugins you trust, and review the rest in the WordPress Toolkit at least once a week.
Make it faster #
Your VPS runs on NVMe storage and high-clock CPUs, so WordPress is quick out of the box. For busy sites and WooCommerce stores, a persistent object cache saves the database from answering the same queries again and again. Enhance includes Redis object caching. Turn it on for the site, then install a Redis object cache plugin in WordPress to connect to it.
Tip: every PHP version that’s still supported is available for every site in the control panel. New installs should use the newest version your plugins support.
