WordPress Training

WHAT IS WORDPRESS

WordPress is an open source software that can be used to build websites, blogs and more.
It is a Theme and Plugin based tool that allows even the most novice of users to design
complex and professionally looking websites. It is estimated that 35% of the web uses
WordPress to design their websites and that number continues to grow.

Often users don’t need to know how to access their database or FTP server, though for
troubleshooting and for customization of some themes and plugins, it is necessary.

Thousands of themes and plugins are available to add features such a booking system,
store or gallery to a WordPress site because it is open source, and anyone can develop
add-ons for it.

Content Management Systems (CMS) are applications that support the management of
content of web pages by multiple users. WordPress is the most popular with Joomla and
Drupal being other common CMS.

WordPress and many other CMS use a database to store user content such as posts, user
log in info, site configuration info, comments, meta data etc.

WordPress is built using PHP/HTML website coding and MySQL Database and relies on
redirect scripts to properly display the content. It is set up with two main installation needs
that our system does for the customer using our Open Source Applications installation
tools.

1. Core PHP file installation done via FTP

a. The files installed via FTP are the core files that allows WordPress to run on
the server. This contains all of the structure files for the Themes, Plugins,
Database connection and all of the “maps” like an .htaccess file to tell the
browser how to locate and find the correct content to display
2. Creation of a Database
a. This is the backbone of the WordPress content. All pages, users, posts,
comments essentially everything that makes up the site content and who can
see that content is written, contained and accessed from the Database. The
Database is the most important part of WordPress.

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 1

ONE CLICK INSTALL ( TECHNICALLY 5 )

Our current hosting platform allows our customers to log into their hosting control panel
and install WordPress without having to download the files and upload them to the server
themselves. Network Solutions customers have the option to install WordPress in the root
directory, whereas Web and Register customers can only install WordPress in a
subdirectory using this method. If a Web or Register customer who wishes to install
WordPress on the root directory or any customer with a legacy hosting platform wants to
install WordPress, they will have to do a manual install.

For Shared Hosting packages, access the Open Source Library from the Site
Enhancements section of the Hosting Control Panel in Account Manager. The Open Source
Library page will list any previously installed applications, as well as the number of
used/available databases.

Step 1: Click View and install Open Source Applications, locate WordPress under the
Blog Tools category and click Add New.

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 2

Step 2: Allows the customer to select a domain and name their sub directory they wish to
install this instance of WordPress.

The drop Select Domain drop down includes the domains and sub-domains that are
currently associated with the customer’s Hosting package. The folder is the directory in the
customer’s Hosting account where the application will be installed. (NOTE: This folder
name will also appear in the website URL by default unless the customer completes a
WordPress URL Change)

Enter the name of the folder (directory) you wish to install to in the Folder field.

The customer can also choose to upload the installation in to the Root directory (htdocs or
www folder) instead of a sub folder although this is not usually recommended.

NOTE: We do not recommend making it the homepage unless this is the only site that is going to be
used on the package as it will force all requests to this single website.

Once the domain and directory is entered click Continue.

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 3

Step 3: Requires the customer to create a Username and Password, email address and
accept the WordPress License Agreement. They’ll need to establish a separate username
and password for each instance of each application they install.

NOTE: The email address specified will be

used by the application if the customer
needs to reset their password in the future.

Step 4: Confirm the Installation by reviewing the information presented is accurate. You
can click Back to make any corrections or Confirm to proceed.

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 4

Step 5: The customer’s WordPress installation is now complete and they can begin
managing their new site.

WORDPRESS HOSTING INSTALLATION

WordPress Hosting Packages installation is slightly different than Shared Hosting.

WordPress packages only allow WordPress to be used or installed so there is not an Open
Source Application library. In order to install on these packages you complete the following
steps.

1. Locate the WordPress Packages section in Account Manager in the navigation

menu

2. Locate the WordPress Package you wish to configure and click Manage

3. Locate WordPress Manager under Tools

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 5

 4. Click Add New

5. Choose the Domain you wish to use or you can use a temporary domain if you are
not ready to assign one. This option will put a place holder 4th level name attached
to the installation until the user wishes to change the url and connect the domain
at a later time. Once entered click Continue

6. Enter the information for the Site Name, User, Email and Password and click
Continue.
Note: users can choose the Use Multisite option if they wish to be able to manage
multiple WordPress sites under one login.

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 6

 7. You will get a confirmation screen indicating the installation is being set up.

MANAGING WORDPRESS

The following section provides high level support information for how to manage the
WordPress installation using features provided through Account Manager. The Manage
link expands and displays a menu that allows the customer to begin managing their
installed application.

The options below are for WordPress on a Shared Hosting Package

Users will also be able to perform actions such as:

 Login Page- Allows the user to log into the WordPress Dashboard to begin editing
and building their site.
 Reset the Admin Password- Allows the customer to reset the Admin password for
the WordPress login
 Manage Database- Access PHP MyAdmin for this WordPress installation right from
the application manager menu

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 7

  Repairing- If the customer experiences trouble accessing an application, you can
attempt a repair. This will in most cases solve the problem by restoring the previous
files.

NOTE: Any customizations made to the application may be lost once the repair is complete. A repair will
completely re-install the software, but will leave the current database in place. This option is used to
reinstall the application software without permanently deleting content stored in the database.

 Removing the application- this will completely uninstall this instance of the
application from the package. This is not something that should happen often and
only should be done after advising the customer that the WordPress installation will
be wiped off the package and the core and database content will be deleted.
 Reinstalling- A customer may need to reinstall their blog. This process will reinstall
the blog to the original state when first installed. All customization to the site and
content will be lost.
 Making the application the homepage - If the customer makes the application
their web site home page, an index.php4 page will be created in the htdocs folder
for UNIX. If the Customer’s current index page is index.php4, the system will detect
the duplicate name and rename the customer’s index.php4 page to index.php4.old
before it creates the new index.php4 page. This will allow the customer to revert
back to their previous homepage since the original index file was never changed or
overwritten.
 Remove as your homepage – If the application is currently set as the homepage
this option will remove it. The application will stay accessible through the original
directory.

WordPress Packages have similar Manage options and they are outlined below:

In order to view the full options you will need to click the 3 dots in the Manage field to
expand the menu.

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 8

  Primary Website Address- Displays the website URL associated with this
installation and will load the site when clicked
 WordPress Admin Panel Login- Loads the login panel to access the WordPress
Dashboard for managing and editing the website content.
 Reset Admin Password- Allows the customer to reset the Admin password for the
WordPress login
 Remove this Blog- Deletes the Database and FTP installation files for this blog. This
should not be used unless the user understands that this will delete this blog and
immediately remove the content.
 Manage Database for this blog- Launch PHP MyAdmin for this WordPress
installation
 Set Primary Website Address- Allows you to designate the primary domain name if
more than one domain is assigned to the blog
 Details- displays the installation details for this blog including installed date and last
updated date.

USING WORDPRESS

Once WordPress is installed, be sure the customer has the updated version of WordPress
and any themes and plugins they plan to use. WordPress can be automatically updated
right from the dashboard by clicking Please Update Now and then the Update Now button.

DASHBOAD MENU ITEMS

 Posts – Create, edit and manage blog posts, viewing categories
or tags
 Media – Find, manage and upload photos, videos and
documents.
 Pages – Create and edit pages which are similar to posts but
are static and are usually the pages in the sites menu.
 Comments – Find and manage any comments made on posts here. Comment
settings can be found under Settings - Discussion
 Appearance – Change the theme, add widgets, edit menus and alter the general
look of the site
 Plugins – Install, remove and manage plugins

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 9

  Users – Add, edit or delete users.
 Tools – Import content from existing blogs/systems or Export content to an XML file
 Settings – Change site title, url, composition, membership settings and more. Some
plugins will create a sub-menu here

One of the settings that we often need to direct customers to is the WordPress Address
(URL) and the Site Address (URL). The WordPress Address is where your admin pages and
other files and folders reside whereas that Site Address is the public URL. If either of these
are changed and it breaks the site it can be changed back through the database. See the
Troubleshooting section for how to change it.

Other menu items may show up depending on the plugins that are installed.

WORDPRESS PLUGINS

You can install new plugins by going to Plugins – Add new and search for the plugin by
name or function. Once you have found the plugin you wish to install click Install Now and
after it is installed click Activate.

Some plugins will require further setup to use or a one time or subscription fee to upgrade
to use all the features

WordPress comes with some standard plugins already installed. These are:

 Akismet Anti-Spam
 Google Analytics for WordPress
 Google XML Sitemaps
 Hello Dolly
 Jetpack
 Podcasting Plugin
 podPress
 WP Super Cache

On installation of WordPress the customer will need to activate and update any pre-
installed plugins they want to use. To update or activate got to: Plugins – Installed plugins
and click on Activate or Update now under the plugin you wish to edit.

Recommended plugins:

 Wordfence – Security Plugin

 WP Smush Pro – now Smush Image Compression and Optimization

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 10

  W3 Total Cache

A list of standard and approved plugins for WordPress can be found on Confluence:
https://confluence.web.com/display/AD/%21+WordPress+Standard+Site+Plugins

WORDPRESS THEMES

You can completely change the look of a site by changing the theme. WordPress comes
with 22 preinstalled themes, however many more are available. To change the theme, go
to Appearance – Themes.

To add a theme not already installed, click Add New from the Themes page. You can
preview any of the themes here. Click Install and then once it is installed click Activate.

Themes also need to be updated as well.

WORDPRESS TROUBLESHOOTING

In order to support our customers with the use of WordPress it will be necessary to identify
common issues that impact WordPress sites. This may require accessing FTP and or PHP
MyAdmin to identify these issues. Many of the below issues can be repaired by the
customer directly or our MyTime Support Team. Your role will be to identify the issue and
direct the customer towards resolution steps.

 Database Connection Issues- In the event the site is resolving to an “Database

Connection” error page you will want to verify the following information:
o Verify Database is not over quota- this is viewable by accessing the
Database Manager within the account and checking the quota under Disk
Space Used

 If it is over quota you can attempt to Resync via PCP to confirm it is

not a mismatch

o Verify the Database Connection String- this is done by comparing the

settings with PCP for the appropriate Database to the wp-config.php file in
the directory for that site. The config file can be loacated and viewed via FTP

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 11

 PCP

wp-config- via FTP- locate the file and right click and select view/edit

o The information needs to match between PCP and the wp-config file code for
the following fields: (Note: Mismatches happen when content is moved
between hosts/packages)
 DB Name
 DB Host (Resource IP) which is usually listed as a mysqlcluster(#)
 DB User
 DB PW
 WordPress URL Issues- many issues can occur related to the site or the dashboard
pages not loading properly. You need to make sure the following information is set
up properly within the Database and an FTP file called .htaccess

o Verify Site/Home URL in Database- Go to PHPMyAdmin to the

wp_options and locate the home and siteurl tables and verify both URLs
match and appear the way the user wishes them to display. (Note- these
tables may be on different pages in the database)

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 12

 o Once you verify the urls match, compare the configuration to the .htaccess
file via FTP to make sure the RewriteBase and RewriteRule fields are
configured according to the database. If all 4 of these settings do not follow
the same method it will break the url and cause page errors or white blank
screens. (Note-If they don’t match, the customer will need to do a
WordPress URL Change or our MTS can correct it for them)

o The database in the example shows siteurl and home include the
/wordpress4 so the .htaccess file should have the /wordpress4 in both the
RewriteBase and RewriteRule fields as shown below.

o Verifying the URLs should be used for the following issues/errors:

 500 Internal Server

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 13

  Blank White Screen
 Login page loads but site does not
 Site loads but Login page does not
 Plugin Issues- Plugins enhance the capabilities of the WordPress site but also often
times cause conflicts with a site loading or not performing as expected. There are 2
main ways you can test if a plugin is causing an issue.
o Login via FTP, locate the wp-contents folder and then the plugins folder-
right click and rename the plugins folder to plugins.old. This will make the
browser ignore the plugins and attempt to load the rest of the site. If the site
loads advise the customer they have a plugin issue and to turn all plugins off
and then re-enable them one by one to identify which one is causing the
issue.
 If there is an error referring to a specific plugin then locate that plugin
folder via FTP and attempt to rename that folder to .old

o Database Plugins Table - an alternative way to temporarily disable plugins

can be done via PHPMyAdmin and going to wp-options and locate the
active_plugins table.

o Click Edit and copy the full field of information into a note pad (make sure
you have it copied) and then delete the content in the database field and
click Go.

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 14

 o Retest the site to see if it loads and update the customer accordingly… Once
you are finished remember to place the plugin data back into the
active_plugins table and resave to return it to the way it was initially.
 .htaccess/redirect issues- In order to determin if there is a redirect rule conflict,
similar to plugins you can rename the .htaccess file to .htaccess.old. This will
bypass the redirect scripts and attempt to load the site. If this loads the site you
would advise the customer there is an issue with the .htaccess file or redirect rules.
(Note- you may see parts of the site load but not the theme or background or just
the main page load and subpages 404 error. This is common but the site loading at
all is confirmation of a bad .htaccess/redirect issue.) This can be repaired by MTS.
 User Credential Issues- User login issues can be tested by going to the wp_users
table in PHPMyAdmin and similar to the plugins, copying the encrypted password
from the impacted user into notepad. You can then edit that user and create a
temporary password and choose MD5 as the encryption method. You can then
attempt to login to the website address/wp-login.php with the username and the
new password you set. If successful you know the customer was using an incorrect
password. You can advise the customer to attempt to reset the password using
links in Account Manager or they can manually update the. When the user is
resetting the password in the database, be sure to advise them to change the
Function option to MD5 so the password will be encrypted)
 SSL Support for WordPress- requires the use of a plugin (ex. Really Simple SSL) and
can be implemented by our MyTime Support Team.

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 15

HTTPS REDIRECT

As with all websites, in order for the website to route through https, the customer will need
to create a redirect, there are a few different options:

METHOD 1 – NEW SITE

If the customer is just setting up WordPress and they know they are putting an SSL on it,
they can change the site URL and WordPress URL to https in Settings – General before they
install or activate any plugins or themes. Some plugins and themes use hard coded URLs,
so if adding an SSL to an existing site, use the .htaccess method.

METHOD 2 – EXISTING SITE

To get an existing site that is installed on the root to redirect to https, the customer can
update the .htaccess file by adding or updating the rewrite rule to:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://domain.com/$1 [R,L]

If there is already a rewrite rule in the .htaccess file, make sure it is replaced rather than
adding a second rewrite rule, or you will end up with a “too many redirects” error when
bringing up the site.

METHOD 3 – USE AN SSL PLUGIN – RECOMMENDED

Really Simple SSL will handle the redirects and has a good knowledgebase for any issues. If
some pages give errors, try going to the permalinks page (settings – permalinks) and don’t
change anything just click Save.

MISSING CONTENT

We occasionally hear from customers who use WordPress and

report that many of their posts, pages or images suddenly
disappeared.This can happen if you aren’t very careful when you
delete the WordPress “user” that created the posts or pages, or
uploaded the images.

When you delete a user, WordPress asks a question that looks

like this:

If you choose “Delete all posts”, WordPress will delete everything

the user created on your site (including page and uploaded Media Library items, too, even
though it doesn’t explicitly say so).

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 16

You don’t want to do that. Always choose Attribute all posts to another user instead. If
they’ve already deleted them by mistake, the only way to fix this is to restore the previous
version of the database, and possibly uploaded files, from a backup.

WORDPRESS HOSTING TROUBLESHOOTING

In addition to the issues we just outlined, WordPress packages have another error that may
display due to the way the files get configured.

LDAP Error- You may run into a situation where the site on a WordPress package returns
an error referencing that the “domain may not be registered in the LDAP database”
This is a provisioning error where the domain pointer did not provision the site files
correctly on the FTP server and the domain or one version of the domain is not being
recognized on the web server.

On each installation there should exist 2 Sym Links or directories in FTP. One for the www
version and one for @none of the assigned domain. These files are duplicates of one
another but if both are not provisioned it will cause the LDAP error to occur.

If one of these folders was not provisioned, you would unassign the domain pointer from
that blog installation in Account Manager and attempt to reassign the domain name. You
would then check in Queue Management in PCP to make sure the domain pointer
provisioned. If successful you would log into FTP and make sure there are a www and
@none folder with the name of the affected domain name.

If provisioning fails in PCP Queue Management or the Sym Link folders do not show in
FTP you will need to escalate this through Ticketing for resolution.

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 17

LEGACY WORDPRESS PRODUCTS

Prior to the current WordPress products available on Storefront today, we had Legacy
products called NSHosting for WordPress and Secure WordPress. These products are no
longer available for purchase. You may see customers who still have these products and
are actively using them. These packages are listed in Account Manger under the My Blog
Packages. Similar to our current WordPress Hosting option these packages only allowed
for the usage of WordPress. They did not come with any other open source application
options, our website builder software or any other options such as Ruby or Scheduled
Tasks etc.

The management of the WordPress site is done much the same way you did for the Shared
UNIX example earlier in training. There is a install wizard that creates the Database and
Installs the core WordPress files into the FTP Space. Accessing the site and database is
done the same way as well via the Account Manger interface for each WordPress
installation.

Secure WordPress came with a restricted set of Themes and Plugins and users were not
able to import data from outside or prior built sites into this product. The version of PHP is
limited on these legacy packages so Customers can and are encouraged to upgrade from a
WordPress hosting package to an nsHosting™ package without losing any of their content.
To upgrade, access WordPress hosting product details page and click the Upgrade to
nsHosting link.

They can also manually move their content from the legacy package to a new WordPress
Hosting option to take advantage of some of the enhanced features like upgraded PHP,
PHP Memory etc.

WORDPRESS.ORG ARTICLES/FORUMS

For any other issues you may run into, try looking it up at wordpress.org. There are thousands of
websites using WordPress and many people post on the forums for support. Someone will have
had the same error and there will be information on how to fix it.

FEB 2020 | Web.com Customer Program Management 18