Wordpress Setup Checklist for Basic Website Development

Wordpress Setup

• Create a separate user for the site owner/business manager and make their user with Admin or Editor privileges, depending on skill level and editing needs.
• Set the homepage to be a static page. (Configured in Settings > Reading), or from a Theme's options panel.
• Setup Sidebars with Theme and/or WooSidebars

Plugins

• Backup:  Updraft Plus.  Schedule weekly or monthly backups to go to the site owner, depending on how frequently they anticipate posting content. 
• SEO: Yoast SEO
• Prevent bloated database/excessive revisions:  WP Revision Control
• Add Contact Form 7

After site is transferred

• Replace any URLs referencing the development site. Do a search in the Pages list for links or image URLs referencing the development site.  If any are found, remove them from the individual pages
• Create a Backup using Updraft plus
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Checklist for creating a basic Wordpress theme

Here's a quick checklist of the things to do before finalizing a Wordpress theme when uploading it to a site:

• Add the Header API action hook
• Add the Footer API action hook
• Image paths in the header and footer file should use the 'template_directory' template tag.
  
• Link the stylesheet with the 'stylesheet_url' template tag
• Change the template name and details in style.css
  
• Ensure the sidebar names in fuctions.php match the sidebar names specified in index.php, single.php, and page.php
• Edit out unnecessary bits in single.php