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Launch Your WordPress Site: A Step-by-Step Checklist

Last modified: February 25, 2026

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Launching a WordPress site involves more than just pointing a domain. There are several steps that must happen in the right order, and a few common pitfalls that can cause real headaches if missed. This article walks you through the full process from start to finish, with links to detailed guides for each step.

This checklist is intended for anyone preparing to launch a site hosted at Pressable, whether you’re familiar with web hosting or doing this for the first time. You don’t need to be technical to follow it, but you should complete each phase before moving to the next.

Phase 1: Before You Start

Before touching your domain or DNS settings, make sure your site is truly ready. Changes during the launch process can be disruptive, so it’s worth taking a few minutes to check the basics first.

  • ☐ Your site is fully built and reviewed on your Pressable staging URL
  • ☐ All plugins and themes are updated
  • ☐ You’ve tested key functionality (forms, checkout, menus, mobile layout)
  • ☐ Admin credentials are secured: no default usernames, strong passwords and/or 2-factor authentication (2fa) are enforced
  • ☐ You’ve created a backup of your site

Back up before you launch. Take a full backup before making any changes. If something goes wrong during the launch process, you’ll want a clean restore point. How to manually back up your site.

Phase 2: Domain Setup

There are two steps here, and the order matters. You need to add your domain in Pressable first, then immediately point your DNS. Do not wait between these two steps: adding your domain in Pressable too far ahead of your DNS update can cause SSL certificate provisioning to time out and require a manual retry.

Make sure you have login access to your domain registrar and know where your DNS settings are before starting. Have everything ready to go so you can complete both steps without delay.

  1. Add your domain in Pressable → Do this first.
  2. Point your DNS to Pressable immediately after → Update your DNS records as soon as the domain is added.

If you’re switching nameservers (not just updating A records): before making any changes, copy all of your existing DNS records over to Pressable’s nameservers first. See our guide on how to add DNS records at Pressable.

This includes any MX records, SPF records, or other entries that handle your email. Skipping this step is the most common reason email stops working after a domain transfer. Your email may look fine at first and only break once the old nameservers stop responding.

Phase 3: SSL / HTTPS

Pressable provisions SSL certificates automatically. Once your DNS is pointed and propagates, your certificate will be issued without any action needed on your part. HTTPS is handled at the platform level, so there’s nothing to configure manually.

Because SSL provisioning relies on DNS verification, the domain must be pointed before the certificate can be issued. This is why Phase 2 comes first.

Seeing SSL errors right after pointing DNS? DNS propagation can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours depending on your registrar and previous TTL settings. If your site shows an SSL warning shortly after pointing, give it some time before troubleshooting. You can also review our SSL troubleshooting guide.

Using Cloudflare DNS? A specific SSL mode setting in Cloudflare can cause a redirect loop when combined with Pressable’s SSL. Review our guide to using Cloudflare SSL with Pressable before pointing your DNS.

Phase 4: WordPress Configuration

Pressable handles most of the URL configuration for you automatically. When your primary domain is updated, we update your WordPress Site URL and Home URL to match, and run a database search-replace to update URL references throughout your content. These settings are tied directly to what’s set as Primary in the Domains section of your Pressable control panel and cannot be manually edited in WordPress.

However, a few things fall outside the automatic search-replace and will need your attention:

Yoast SEO

The search-replace doesn’t touch many custom plugin tables, including Yoast’s indexables table, which stores a separate index of your content’s URLs. If you use Yoast, you’ll need to rebuild this manually after launching.

See our guide on how to rebuild Yoast indexables.

Page Builders (Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, etc.)

Page builders often store your staging URL in compiled CSS and JavaScript files. Even after the search-replace runs on the site’s database, these compiled file assets may still reference the old URL, which can break the appearance of your pages.

To fix this, rebuild the affected pages or flush your page builder’s cache. See our guide on how to flush page builder caches, which contains instructions for several popular page builders.

Other Plugins

If a staging URL remains in the custom database tables of any other plugins or third-party code, you may need to run an “All Tables” search-replace to update them to the site’s live domain.

See our guide on using search and replace on WordPress at Pressable for information about how to use the search-replace tool available from the site’s MyPressable Control Panel.

Phase 5: Search Engine Visibility

Pressable staging sites are set to block search engine indexing by default, so there’s no risk of your unfinished site being crawled or showing up in search results. When your site goes live on its primary domain, that restriction is lifted automatically.

Even so, it’s worth confirming the setting is off once you’re live. Go to Settings → Reading in your WordPress dashboard and make sure “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unchecked.

Once your site is live, consider submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console. This helps Google discover your content faster and gives you visibility into how your site is performing in search.

Phase 6: Post-Launch Checks

Your site is live. Before you call it done, run through a few final checks to make sure everything is working as expected.

  • ☐ The site loads correctly on the live domain (not the Pressable staging URL, which should now redirect to the live domain)
  • ☐ Key pages look correct on desktop and mobile
  • ☐ Forms submit successfully and confirmation messages appear
  • ☐ If you have a WooCommerce store, complete a test checkout end to end
  • ☐ Check for broken links or missing images
  • ☐ Confirm page caching is active

How to confirm page caching is working: Pressable uses Batcache for full-page caching. You can verify it’s active by checking the response headers on your live site. How Batcache page caching works.

WooCommerce stores: check your Order Attribution Tracking setting. WooCommerce’s Order Attribution Tracking feature sets cookies on every visitor, which causes pages to be served without caching. This can significantly impact performance, especially on high-traffic stores. Review the setting and decide whether the data it provides is worth the trade-off. For most stores, it isn’t. WooCommerce Order Attribution Tracking and caching.

You’re welcome to reach out to our 24/7 support team when you’re ready to “go live,” so that you have somebody on hand in chat to answer any questions that arise during the process.