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Before You Go Live

Your homepage, logo, menus and footer are yours now. Run these checks before you point your domain at the site or tell anyone about it. Each takes a few minutes, and most of them are things a visitor or a search engine notices first.

1. Set your site title and tagline​

  1. Go to Settings > General.

  2. Type your site's name in Site Title.

  3. Type a short line about the site in Tagline, or leave it empty. The screen's own hint asks for "a few words" that explain what the site is about.

  4. Click Save Changes.

    Settings > General with Site Title filled in as Brightside Journal and Tagline as Food, travel and city life, above the screen's hint to explain in a few words what the site is about

Where Foxiz shows them:

  • Site Title is the name in the browser tab and in search results, after the title of each page.
  • It is your logo when you have not uploaded a logo image, printed as text. With a logo image, it is the image's alternative text, read out by screen readers.
  • It is the site name in a link preview when a post is shared on social networks, and in the subject of the share by email button.
  • Tagline follows the site title in the browser tab of your homepage. Foxiz also prints it beside the logo, hidden from view.

Site Icon, on the same screen, is the favicon: the small picture in the browser tab. How to Upload Logo & Favicon? sets it.

2. Remove what you do not need​

  • The demo's posts. If you imported a demo, go to Foxiz > Demo Importer, click Cleanup Import and choose Posts & Attachments. It deletes the posts, images, categories and tags the import brought in, and keeps the demo's pages and menus. Your own posts are not touched.

    The Clear Importer Content dialog, offering Posts & Attachments or All Content

  • WordPress's sample content. A new WordPress site starts with a post called "Hello world!" and a page called "Sample Page". In Posts and Pages, hover each one and click Trash.

  • The demo's footer text. Check the copyright line and the footer links are yours: How to Add the Footer Logo, Social Icons and Copyright.

3. Let search engines in​

  1. Go to Settings > Reading.
  2. Under Search engine visibility, make sure Discourage search engines from indexing this site is not ticked.
  3. Click Save Changes if you changed it.

Settings > Reading, Search engine visibility: Discourage search engines from indexing this site, not ticked, outlined in orange

The same box is offered when WordPress is installed, so it is often still ticked from when the site was being built. While it is ticked, search engines are asked to stay away and WordPress turns its own sitemap off.

4. Publish a privacy policy​

WordPress creates a draft page called Privacy Policy when it is installed. Edit it to describe what your site collects, publish it, and choose it at Settings > Privacy.

Foxiz can also show a privacy notice bar with an Accept button. It is off by default. Whether you need one depends on where your readers are and what your site collects; Options GDPR, for the Privacy Notice Popup Bar turns it on and links it to your policy page.

5. Turn debug mode off​

Open Foxiz > System Info and look at Debug Mode under WordPress Info. It should read Disabled. When it reads Enabled, the row turns red, because debug mode can show visitors details of your site's PHP code. Ask whoever set up the site, or your host, to set WP_DEBUG to false in wp-config.php.

The WordPress Info section of Foxiz > System Info, with Debug Mode reading Disabled

Checking Server Requirements explains the other rows on that page.

6. Activate the licence on the live domain​

A local or staging address never counts against your plan, but the live domain does: when you launch, it takes one production site. Check you have one spare at store.foxiz.io before you point the domain across.

  • You built the site on its live domain: it is activated already, and it is already counted.

  • You built it on a staging or local copy and are moving it: the live site opens the Foxiz menu on Reconnect Your License. Click Reconnect License and authorize the new address. How to Move Your Site to a New Domain or Host walks the whole move.

    The Foxiz dashboard headed Reconnect Your License, naming the address the license is registered to, with the Reconnect License button outlined in orange

Which sites count against your license lists the addresses Foxiz treats as staging.

7. Check that email arrives​

Readers who sign up, password resets and contact forms all depend on your site sending email, and many hosts do not deliver it as it comes. Create a test account or send yourself a contact form message. If nothing arrives, Registration and Password Emails Do Not Arrive fixes it.

8. Submit your sitemap​

Once the domain points at the site, tell Google where your posts are: How to Submit Your Sitemap to Google Search Console. Do it again whenever the domain changes.

Next Step​

With the site live, the day to day is writing.

How to Create a New Post?​

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