Your first site

This tutorial creates a site for a customer, Northwind Bakery, and takes it live on northwindbakery.example. It needs a running panel, which the Quick start sets up.

The New site wizard with a site title entered

Create the site

Open Sites and choose New site.
In Site title, enter Northwind Bakery. Site name (slug) fills in as northwind-bakery. It names the container, the database and the dev address.
Leave Use my own domain instead of a dev subdomain off. The wizard shows the address: northwind-bakery.dev.example.com. Choose Continue.
On the WordPress step, enter the customer’s Admin email. Leave Generate a strong admin password (shown once after creation) on, pick the Language and the PHP version, and choose Continue.
On the Plugins step, tick plugins from your catalog, or search under More plugins from wordpress.org. A fresh panel has an empty catalog. Choose Continue.
Check the Review step and choose Create site.

Watch the job

The page now follows the job’s log. The panel creates the site’s network, database and container, installs WordPress and the plugins, and runs their recipes. Only then can visitors reach the site. A yellow line is a warning, such as a plugin that would not install. The site is created anyway.

When the job is done, the page shows the site’s address and the WordPress admin password. Copy the password now: the panel shows it only here. The job stays listed under Automations → All jobs.

Open the site

Open https://northwind-bakery.dev.example.com. Allow up to a minute for the first visit, while Traefik gets the site’s certificate. It is a fresh WordPress install that asks search engines not to index it.

Choose Open site page, then Log in to WordPress on the Overview tab. A new tab opens the WordPress dashboard, signed in as the site’s administrator. The link behind it works once, within two minutes. If the browser blocks the new tab, the panel shows the link instead.

Go live

Once the customer’s domain is ready, point it at the server: an A record for northwindbakery.example and one for www.northwindbakery.example. Then choose Go live → on the Overview tab, enter both domains, and leave Keep the dev hostname as a 301 redirect on. The dev address keeps working while the certificate is issued. Domains and going live covers the rest.

What changed

northwindbakery.example is now the site’s address. www.northwindbakery.example and the dev address redirect to it.
WordPress’s address changed, and the old address was rewritten in every table.
The recipes ran again, so licensed plugins are activated for the new address.
The Sites list shows the site as live, and Go live → is gone from its page.

Limits

Lost the admin password? Reset a user’s password on the WordPress tab makes a new one.
A site’s slug cannot be changed after it is created.
Search engines stay discouraged after going live. Untick Discourage search engines from indexing this site in WordPress under Settings → Reading.