Getting Started With Your New Site

We are so excited to be handing off the content updates of your site to you and your team! Here are a few tutorials we've put together to help you along. You may also visit the blog to search for individual lessons and further documentation. In this overview, we will discuss terminology and give you a brief overview of adding or editing content to find the most important items on your site.

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WordPress Backend

Menus

Your menu may be displayed on the front end of your site, but often changes in which pages are displayed are found on the backend. There are a few exceptions where your menu is created using a list widget, but for the most part, you edit your menus from the WordPress backend.

Location

WordPress backend > Appearance > Menus

You can simply click the check box and click the “add to menu” button to add a new page to the menu. For more detailed instructions, please see this tutorial. 

Users

The user part of the WordPress backend allows you to add, edit or customize Users and their permissions on your website. We highly recommend limiting the number of admins on your site and never giving out your password. You can utilize a plugin if you have hired a third party that needs temporary admin access. But suppose you have a care plan with us. In that case, you must send us the person’s info, what specifically they need access to, and what they are doing for you or your company so we can decide what level of access they will need and create a backup to prevent any malicious behavior or breaks to the code of the site and track their behaviors. Suppose you do not send us this information, or they are not approved, and you enter them in as an admin yourself. In that case, you will void the security policy on your site and be financially responsible for any security issues arising after giving them access.

Please delete anyone who is no longer a member of your team to prevent any further security issues.

Tutorial

Settings

Tutorial

General

Contains

  • Site Name
  • Site Tagline
  • Language
  • Timezone
  • Date Format
  • And admin Email

Writing

You shouldn’t need to utilize this one.

Reading

Contains

  • Choose which page is your homepage
  • How many posts to display in your archives (search results, blog post list, etc.) – I recommend setting it to 12.
  • Search Engine Visibility – If you aren’t showing up on Google, double check this is unchecked.

Discussion

Contains

  • Who can comment on your site
  • What they are allowed to say in comments
  • How you want to be notified

Media

In the media section, you’ll find the pre-establish resizing settings of your images. These are auto-created by WordPress.

Permalinks

This is how the link structure on your site works. This is usually set to “post name” for best SEO practices.

Privacy

Select the page that contains your privacy policy here.

Comments

In this area, you can approve, spam or trash any comments on your site. Please notify us if you are getting a lot of spam suddenly, and we will add some stricter policies.

Form Submissions

This is an Elementor feature. It keeps a copy of all contact form submissions on your site. This way, if there is ever an issue with deliverability, you have a record of anyone who has contacted you.

Tutorial

Knowledge Base

You will get a knowledge base if you have any custom features on your website! This contains any tutorials specific to your site. If you ever request a tutorial, we add a copy of it directly to your website, so it never gets lost and you can easily onboard new team members.

Products

There are three ways you could have products listed on your site (and three places to look for them!).

Full E-Commerce > WooCommerce Products

Funnel Feature > Studio Cart > Products

Affiliate Shop/ External Integration with Existing Shop > Products

Other Custom Features

Services (or other things like class schedules)

Your site may have custom features such as services, podcasts, class schedules, or whatever was agreed upon in your proposal. To add new content or edit existing content for these items, please visit the backend of your site and find the correlated WordPress menu heading. From there, you will simply add a post or find the post you would like to edit. These pages are created with an Elementor Template by default – meaning that the content you add dynamically populates the pre-designed template.

Funnels

We utilize the Studio Cart plugin for normal funnel systems and WPFunnels for WooCommerce integrated systems. You can locate these in the WordPress Admin.

Affiliate and/or Connections to External Shop

We often create non-eCommerce affiliate shops for our clients. These are similar to WooCommerce but without the bloat. A template is designed for the site’s backend with the needed fields to dynamically populate the pre-designed template on the site’s front end. Please fill in all fields to properly display the content for your affiliate products.

Themes Overview

We utilize the Hello theme exclusively because it integrates seamlessly with Elementor. But if you have any custom features on your site, you may see one of our child themes. A child theme contains any custom code needed to customize your site and the Hello theme. You need the child and Hello theme installed to ensure your site performs as expected.

Tutorial

Plugins Overview

Adding additional plugins

If you have a care plan with us, please give us the details of the plugin you would like to install (the features you are looking for, the license code or login credentials, and the zip file), so we can double-check that feature doesn’t already exist on the site, it is the best plugin for that specific feature needed, and so we can install it on a development environment first. Hence, we verify it doesn’t crash your site.

*If you are on the site network, please send us the plugin information and feature you are looking for so we can decide whether we need to add it to the network collective plugin repository. We do not guarantee that we will allow your plugin, but you can migrate your site away from the network at any point.

Standard Plugins

Advanced Custom Fields (or Advanced Custom Fields Pro) – Custom Fields to populate dynamic templates

This creates custom fields to help you add the content needed to dynamically populate your templates. If you delete this, you will lose all content associated with these fields and break your templates.

If your site contains Advanced Custom Fields Pro, deleting it will cost you any backend site settings and repeater content (content within your posts where you can duplicate sections).

Dynamic.ooo – Dynamic Content

This helps create dynamic content, such as recommending other posts/products/services related to the current post being viewed.

Elementor + Elementor Pro – Visual Page Builder

This is your visual builder. Elementor is free, while Elementor Pro is the paid version. If you delete Elementor Pro, you will lose all of your templates (headers, footers, blog post templates, etc.)

Human Presence – Spam Monitoring

Human Presence is our spam plugin. It prevents excess spam from plaguing your blog comments and form submissions.

Rank Math – SEO

This is your SEO plugin. It allows you to set all of your SEO specifications within each post and handles things like redirects.

SMTP – Ensures Website Email Deliverability

Only needed for sites that use budget hosting, such as GreenGeeks, or are on the site network. If this is added to your site, you will need to integrate it with an email system, so you receive emails from your site such as “lost password” or “contact form submissions.”

Please follow the link above to set up this plugin correctly on your site.

Caching Plugin

Breeze or other plugins utilized by your host to keep your site optimized and fast.

Care Plan Plugins

Breeze – Speed Optimizing

This is our caching and optimization plugin. It keeps your site optimized and fast.

WordFence – Security Monitoring

This is our security monitoring plugin. It notifies us of all activity on your site.

Other Plugins

Depending on your needs, you may have additional plugins on your site. Here is a list of the ones we usually use.

StudioCart – Used for Sales Pages

This plugin allows for funnel sales page checkout and integrates with Paypal and Stripe.

WooCommerce + Woo Add-ons – Ecommerce

This is your E-Commerce plugin plus any additional features you might need, such as payments, bulk purchasing, etc.

Affiliate or Pretty Links – Link Redirects
WPFunnels –  Funnels Add on for WooCommerce
Amelia – Scheduling Plugin

*To add these additional features, please contact us for pricing

Smash Balloon Instagram Feed (or other Social Media Display Plugin)

Front End of Site

Customizer

Front end of site > Customizer

This is where you can change:

  • Logos
  • Browser Logo
  • Site Name
  • Site Tagline
  • Designate your homepage
  • Set the default page template

Elementor Features

The Complete Guide to Elementor

Templates VS Custom Pages

Some of your pages, such as your homepage, about page, and contact page, are created using a custom Elementor page, versus pages like your single posts are made using an Elementor Template. So what’s the difference?

The main difference is how you edit the physical content on the individual pages. A regular custom Elementor page is edited directly through the Elementor editor while creating a piece of content like a blog post or service is done through the WordPress Backend. That content dynamically populates the Elementor Template.

So can you edit the Elementor template directly? Yes! You can change the template’s design by accessing it on the front end of the site or the back end. Still, please be aware that there are sections with specific settings linked to your particular pages (dynamic content), which, if deleted, will break the template for all your posts, services, etc.

Visual Builder

Please see detailed tutorials on editing your content (text and images)

Tutorial

Responsive Design

After editing your content, creating new pages, or making any changes, please double-check how it looks on all devices.

Tutorial. 

Global Settings

Your global settings allow the same colors, fonts, and styling to be used sitewide. This keeps your website fast and allows you to create new pages easily.

Elementor Tutorial

Forms + Sign Ups

Forms and sign-ups are created within Elementor in the Forms Widget.  If you need to add a form to a post on the WordPress backend simply create the form as a template within the Backend of WordPress in the Elementor Templates area and copy the shortcode into your post.

Tutorial

Signup Forms

Sign up are also created within this widget, but the API integration must be set up on the site’s backend first.

Tutorial

Add Your Integration (ConvertKit, Active Campaign, MailChimp, etc.)

To find where to add your API details, go to the backend of WordPress > Elementor > Settings > Integrations.

Then simply add the info needed for whichever service you utilize.

Add Your Integration to your Sign up

Once this information has been added, you can select Elementor Form Widget > Actions After Submit > Choose your service provider from the list > Choose your Form/List/Tag.

Tutorial

Custom Code

Elementor has a native way of adding custom code to your website (instead of adding another plugin or trying to add it to your theme’s files). Read this tutorial to add custom scripts such as Google Analytics, tracking, or Pixel.

WordPress BackEnd > Elementor > Custom Code

Video Tutorial

Custom Fonts

You are welcome to utilize your custom fonts on your website. You simply need to upload the Web Font File to the Custom Fonts area of the site.

WordPress BackEnd > Elementor > Custom Fonts

Tutorial

Kit Library

Elementor Pro comes with a free template library where you can utilize pre-designed templates on any of your site pages.

The front end of the site/Edit with Elementor on New Page > File Icon in Section > Find Template.

Tutorial

PopUps

Elementor has a native popup builder. (Do not add another plugin for popups – this will cause conflicts with Elementor)

To add or edit a popup

WordPress Backend > Templates > Popups

Tutorial

Dynamic Content

Dynamic content helps populate templates or pull information from other parts of your site. I use it on the sites I build to populate templates like the posts template, create one place to edit dates on multiple pages for funnels, and create various ways of displaying your content loops.

What is it?

Tutorial

 

Resources

Pinpoint your brand vision with my style quiz. You’ll get a free downloadable brand board and even generate a homepage with your personal brand style!