Installing WordPress and what to do straight after

Installing

1. In cPanel, open WordPress Management.
2. Click Install WordPress.
3. Choose the domain and copy the login details it generates.
4. Click Install and let it finish.

Save those generated details to your password manager straight away. The installer creates them for you, so you do not even pick the administrator name - which is a good thing, because admin is the first one automated attacks try.

Five things to do immediately

1. Turn on automatic updates for the core and for plugins. A neglected application is the most common source of compromised sites on shared hosting.
2. Delete what you do not use. An inactive plugin or theme is still code on disk and can still be exploited.
3. Set your permalinks under Settings -> Permalinks -> Post name.
4. Turn on the object cache in LiteSpeed Cache. Our servers run LiteSpeed, so that is the only caching plugin you need.
5. Confirm the site runs over HTTPS - see Activating SSL and forcing HTTPS.

Backups

We back up shared hosting daily and keep 14 days of history. Before a larger change, a theme update for instance, take your own backup anyway - restoring a whole account because of one plugin is a bigger intervention than you need.

A backup plugin that stores its copies on the same hosting is not a backup. A problem with the server takes both.