WordPress: Where to Start

What KapsuleHost does for a WordPress site, what you still do yourself, and which guide to read for each job.

WordPress runs most of the web, and it is the default choice for most Kapsule sites. When you create a site as WordPress or WooCommerce, an extra WordPress group appears in the site menu with tools that only make sense for WordPress: updates, security, caching, an application performance view, and payments on stores. This page maps them.

Installing and Getting In

Create the site as a WordPress site and the install is done for you, including the database and the admin account. You choose the admin username, password and site title during setup.

The WordPress admin password is shown once during setup. Save it in your password manager before you continue. Recovering it later is possible but slower than writing it down now.

If you cannot get into wp-admin, work through WordPress Admin Access and, if the password is the problem, Resetting the WordPress Password. The reset path in the panel does not depend on your site being able to send email, which is why it works when the "lost password" link does not.

Start here: Installing WordPress and WordPress Admin Access.

The WordPress Menu

Open Websites, click your site, and the WordPress group holds:

Tab	What it is for
WordPress	The main WordPress panel for the site
Updates	Core, plugin and theme update handling
Security	Hardening and integrity checks
Caching	Page and object caching controls
APM	Application performance, which requests are slow and why
Payments	WooCommerce payment configuration, stores only

Updates: The Thing That Breaks Sites

Almost every "my site went down and I did not change anything" ticket turns out to be an update. Not because updates are bad, but because an unattended update of a plugin with a compatibility problem can take a site out at three in the morning.

The safe pattern is boring and works:

Take a backup, or confirm today's automatic one exists. Taking a Backup.
Apply the update on staging. Staging Environments and The WordPress Staging Workflow.
Click through the parts of the site that matter: the homepage, a post, the checkout.
Push to live.

If you would rather the platform handled the routine ones, see Automatic Updates. Read WordPress Updates and WordPress Plugins for what to update and what to be careful with.

Update one plugin at a time when you are on a site that matters. If something breaks, you know exactly which one did it. Bulk-updating twenty plugins turns a two-minute fix into an afternoon.

Speed

In rough order of how much difference they make for how little effort:

Caching. Serve a stored copy instead of rebuilding the page for every visitor. Start at the Caching tab. See Site Caching.
The CDN. Put the cached copy near your visitors instead of near your server. Availability depends on your plan and requires a custom domain. See Enabling the CDN.
PHP version. Newer PHP is meaningfully faster. See Changing PHP Version.
Images and plugins. The two things that most often make a WordPress site slow are enormous uploaded images and plugins doing work on every request. The APM tab shows you which requests are slow.
Memory. If pages die halfway rather than loading slowly, you are hitting a limit, not a speed problem. See WordPress Memory Limit and PHP Extensions and Settings.

For the general version of this, see Website Speed and Site Slowness and Resource Limits.

The Classic WordPress Failures

Each of these has a specific, known cause and a specific fix. Do not guess.

A blank white page. Almost always a PHP fatal error with display disabled. The log names the file. The WordPress White Screen, Error Logs.
The homepage works, every other page 404s. Permalink rewriting. Note that Kapsule web hosting runs nginx, so .htaccess rules do nothing here. Permalink Issues, WordPress and .htaccess.
The padlock is broken on a page that used to be fine. Mixed content, usually after moving domains. Fixing Mixed Content.
Old URLs everywhere after a domain change. WordPress writes absolute URLs into the database. Search and Replace.
Uploads fail above a certain size. A PHP limit, not WordPress. PHP Extensions and Settings.

WooCommerce

A store is a WordPress site with money in it, which raises the stakes on everything above. Backups matter more, updates need staging every time, and the Payments tab is where the gateway configuration lives. See WooCommerce, Site Payments and, if you would like the platform team involved, Care for WooCommerce.

For Developers

WP-CLI for command-line management.
Adding SSH Keys for shell access.
Git Deploy to deploy from a repository.
Cron Jobs for real system cron instead of WordPress pseudo-cron, which only fires when someone visits.
Using phpMyAdmin and Remote Database Access.

Security

WordPress is targeted constantly, mostly by automated scanners looking for one unpatched plugin. The Security tab covers hardening; the rest is habit.

Keep plugins updated and delete the ones you do not use.
Use two-factor authentication on your Kapsule account. Two-Factor Authentication.
Know the recovery path before you need it. If Your Site Is Hacked and Malware Cleanup.

See Security for the whole picture, and Site Security for the site-level controls.

Moving an Existing WordPress Site In

Use the migration wizard under Migrations. See Migrations, Migrating to Kapsule and Migrating From cPanel.

Still stuck? Opening a Support Ticket, or start from Websites and the Hosting Glossary.