How to Create a WordPress Website

The majority of small businesses do not have a WordPress website. It can be time-consuming and expensive to manage and set up a WordPress website, depending on the type of business you have, how complex your site is, and whether or not you have in-house knowledge. You might know how to build a WordPress site. The more time you spend managing and administering your website, the less time you have for coding or creating content. Or execute tasks that will directly grow your business.

Plesk has introduced the WP toolkit to help create, secure, and manage WordPress apps, sites, and instances. We offer continuous updates as well as a close relationship with WordPress. Plesk WP Toolkit is one of the most secure and versatile WordPress platforms on the market today. This guide will explore the benefits of using the WP Toolkit when creating a WordPress site.

What is the WP Toolkit?

Plesk WP Toolkit was created for developers, hosts, and small businesses. We studied their workflows, their requirements, and the biggest time-wasters. The main goal of the Toolkit, then, is to save time. The Toolkit is a great tool for beginners and professionals alike. It simplifies development workflows, automates processes, and manages instances. All in one dashboard.

This extension for the Plesk platform allows you to:

• Deployment of a new WordPress instance
• Use common security measures on a WordPress instance
• Install themes and plugins on a WordPress installation
• Update WordPress and enable automatic updates
• Create a staging/acceptance test sandbox using a WordPress production website
• Synchronize code or database changes between a staging/acceptance test environment and a production WordPress site

To use all of the features, you will need a Plesk Web Host Edition or Web Pro Edition License. The Web Admin license allows for features like one-click deployments, plugin/theme administration, and manual upgrades.

How to create a WordPress site using WP Toolkit

The ability to install a new site with just one click is a feature that many users love.

• By deploying a fresh instance, you can create an entirely new website;
• You can import an existing WordPress site from another server.
• Install a WordPress site manually.

Deploying a New Instance

You can import an existing WordPress site from another server to your new one. The free Site Import Extension installed on your Plesk server and the FTP login information of your old website is required. This video shows you the five-step simple process of using WP Toolkit for importing a website from another host:

1. Click on Website Importing in the Plesk Control Panel. You will need the Plesk Migration extension.
2. Enter the URL of your old website, FTP username, and Password. ClickOK.
3. Click Start Import after selecting the WordPress instance.
4. Reset the WordPress administrator password after the import. It is required to log in directly to WordPress from the Plesk interface.
5. Click login, and your site will be ready for use.

Manually deploying a WordPress site.

You can manually deploy a WordPress site from a ZIP or Git archive. You can read more about manual installation and detection of a WordPress install here. Click on “Adding existing WordPress installations to WP Toolkit.”

Installing plugins with WP Toolkit

Installing plugins to manage your WordPress site is the next step after creating/installing it. The Toolkit has a powerful theme and plugin engine that allows you to search, filter, and install WordPress themes.

Upload them if you want to use a custom theme or plugin that isn’t in the WordPress catalog. You can then use them in the Plugins/Themes tab. You can update them by uploading a newer version. You can edit the plugins at once by updating all instances of the old version.

Security Updates

Many web professionals spend hours updating and monitoring their websites in order to keep them safe from vulnerabilities and threats. WP Toolkit automates this process, so there’s no need to worry about losing business data or credibility. WP Toolkit has already applied critical security improvements to all installations. With just one click, you can use essential updates to your WordPress building.

The security status feature is one way the WP Toolkit can help you manage Security. Four labels are displayed:

• Unknown The instance has not been scanned for security issues.
• Danger: Critical Security Measures have not been applied yet to the instance
• Warning: Only the most critical security measures were applied. This is the security level that WP Toolkit uses by default for WordPress instances.
• Secure All (critical and recommended security measures) have been implemented.

You don’t need to worry about it. Click Check Security to make an update if you have recently imported a brand new instance or if you are seeing cases with a status of “unknown.” The most important aspect of safety is timely updates. We pay a lot of attention to your WordPress website and keep it updated.

The feature is an exciting addition to the Toolkit. It uses AI technology to enhance the Security of your website further. Smart Updates are available in Plesk 17.8 and are now included with the WP toolkit Deluxe.

How Smart Updates Work

• Calculates the change score by running a test update on a cloned WordPress site and comparing before and after results. If the score falls within the threshold set, then the update will be considered safe.
• WP Toolkit also creates a restore point prior to the update for added safety. You can always go back to a working version of your site if something goes wrong. WP Toolkit only keeps one restore point per installation. The restore point that was used will be replaced with a new one during the next update.
• Click delete to remove the restore point once you are sure the website is working perfectly after the upgrade.

With WP Toolkit version 3.4, you can now update multiple WordPress instances at the same time. Smart Updates is enabled, and the update will be installed only if there are fewer changes than the threshold.

Staging and Production

Each business must make updates and changes to its website. Updates to the theme of the website, the installation and testing of a new plug-in, or redesigning your home page are all examples. This usually means putting your site into maintenance mode and taking it offline. This can result in lost sales and a bad experience for both new and old customers.

It also takes a lot more time and effort. You need a staging site to edit and update your production website safely. A staging environment is a copy of your production site where you can experiment safely without risking breaking your public website. It is difficult to create a staging site and sync changes with your production website. WP Toolkit offers one-click cloning, so it’s easy to do.

Click Clone in the Websites and Domains overview dashboard.

By default, the new instance is created on a staging subdomain. You can choose “a new domain,” make another subdomain for staging, or use a different domain.

The loading screen will show that the database and files are being copied and the configuration files updated.

The next step is to edit the properties of the new staging instance. Since WP Toolkit version 3.4, the search engine indexing on the new cloned model is turned off by default. This can be changed on the WP Toolkit >Global Settings page. You can also modify the default prefix for the subdomain.

You should also password-protect your staging environment in order to restrict access to experimental and new content. You may need to enable debugging if you are testing a new piece of code or plugin. You can use the cloning function to create a staging area to update your WordPress site safely.

• After reaching a milestone, you can publish a website that you’ve been developing.
• Create multiple versions of the same website to allow a client to choose their preferred option
• Clone an existing site to use as a template in a new project