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Launching A WordPress Site

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Eric Stout edited this page Apr 30, 2018 · 3 revisions

Once a WordPress site has been reviewed by a designer and the client and approved for launch, it's time to get the site production ready and deployed.

Table of Contents

Readying Your Code

We will assume that you are using Prelude as your starting theme for the project.

  1. Verify that you are using minified JS and CSS files (this is by default, but may change during development if you are debugging)
  2. Run gulp images to ensure all project image assets are compressed
  3. Merge develop branch into master
  4. Bump the theme version to 1.0.0 by running gulp version --major

Packaging Your Theme

Next, we will want to ensure that we package our theme, and save it to dropbox.

  1. Run gulp package
  2. Move created zip file to the project's dropbox (you can remove the zip file from the repo)

Deploying To Flywheel

If the site will be hosted on Flywheel, deploying is fairly straight forward. See Deploying On Flywheel for more information.

If the site has already been on Flywheel for proofing, just be sure to disable privacy mode and set the DNS information & domain accordingly.

Deploying To Non-Flywheel Sites

If a WordPress install does not exist, follow the instructions found in Setting Up A WordPress Install Server-Side.

  1. Move existing site to a folder on server called _OLD if one exists
  2. Upload your theme to wp-contents/themes
  3. Install and configure WP DB Migrate Pro
  4. Push database from staging to production
  5. Save permalinks
  6. Install and configure WP Rocket Cache
  7. Install and configure WordFence

Launch Tasks

There are some various plugins and tasks that must be completed when a site is launched that apply regardless of what type of server the site is being deployed on. These steps should be completed on all projects.

  • Search + Replace Staging URLs with Production URLs
  • Save Permalinks
  • Change factor1admin Password to Complex Password
  • Disable "Block Search Engines" in WP
  • Disable All Development Plugins

Feel free to open an issue if you find mistakes, enhancements, or would like to see some new documentation.

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