Greetings Earthling! Are you prepared to launch your brand new website? We hope it looks great, but more importantly, we hope it performs as well as it looks! Here are a few final steps to make sure you get the most out of your WordPress site before launch.
Configure Email Delivery for your Website Forms
For security reasons, WP Farm prohibits the use of email relaying services to and from our servers. Not only does this prevent unauthorized phishing in the unlikely event that your website is hacked, but it also allocates our server resources solely to the operation of the server and your website. This is just one of the many security rules we apply in order to provide maximum security and performance for your WordPress site.
For our technical guru’s: SMTP ports 25, 465, 587 are blocked and cannot be used for inbound/outbound email services including Webmail.
So what does this mean? If you have a form on your website, you will not receive any form submissions unless you configure an SMTP plugin of your choice. We recommend using:
WP Mail SMTP by WPForms
In order to configure the plugin, you must choose an SMTP provider. We recommend using any one of the providers below. WP Farm exclusively uses Mailgun and can offer limited support for customers who decide to use them:
- Mailgun
- Pepipost
- SendInBlue
- Twilio
Configuring SMTP can feel like a drag, so if you feel unsure of how to configure it, just contact our technical support team for assistance. Our team is happy to help configure it for you at no extra cost.
SSL Certificate for Your Website
SSL Certificates encrypt your website traffic and is required by search engines in order to be displayed on search engine listings. It is also required by law if you are accepting payments on your website through an eCommerce system such as wooCommerce.
Luckily, WP Farm’s AutoSSL feature provides a free SSL certificates per domain. The system will periodically inspect your installed certificates and replace those that are about to expire or that are insufficient to provide a baseline level of security.
If you are not sure if you have an SSL certificate installed, just open your website in any browser such as Chrome and look at the top left corner of your the URL field for a lock icon. If a lock icon is there, then your site is secure! If not, then please contact our technical support team so we can help you install or troubleshoot the reason why it may not be showing up.
For customers with websites expecting high traffic or containing sensitive information, we strongly recommend purchasing a high security SSL certificate to replace the free AutoSSL certificate provided by us. High security SSL certificates can be purchased through our website here.
Replacing Development URL’s
- When you build a new website, you will need to replace any development links with the actual live links to prevent broken links from appearing when your website goes live. For example:
Development website:
www.mywebsite.com/staging
Live website:
www.mywebsite.com
If you have developed a staging website on our platform, then our built-in “Push to Live” feature will automatically replace these links for you. Using a plugin to migrate your website such as the WP All-in-One Migration plugin will also replace any links automatically.
On rare occasions, these automated systems will miss a link or two and we encourage customers to take a few minutes to double check that all links have been switched over. This can be done by installing the Better Search and Replace plugin on your WordPress website after the migration and searching for any remnants of the old URL. This tool can be found inside the Dashboard of your website under Tools > Search and Replace.
Compressing Images for Fast Loading (Optional)
Although it’s always good practice to upload optimized photos in the first place, you may not have the tools or knowledge to do so.
As a quick solution, you can optimize images already on your website by using an image compression plugin. These useful plugins will automatically compress each image into its smallest file size minimizing the loss of image quality when possible. So far, there are two plugins we can recommend that offer this as an automated service:
Both plugins offer a free tier for a limited amount of photos to optimize, with paid premium tiers for websites with lots of photos.
Connect Cloudflare CDN (Optional)
- Cloudflare is a reverse-proxy content delivery network that hides your DNS records from the public and distributes your website at faster speeds throughout the world, regardless of where your website is located. It’s all around a great freebie for the site owner with maximum security and performance in mind. There are paid premium tiers for additional services, but normally the free tier will suffice for most websites.
As an added convenience, we provide free setup and configuration of Cloudflare for all customers. Please contact our technical support team for more information.
Congratulations! You’re ready to deploy your WordPress website! Good luck with your endeavors and as always, if you have any questions, just ask a WP Farm team member for support. We’re here 24/7/365 to ensure you get the most out of your WordPress site.
