How-to Set up GoDaddy Managed WordPress – Fresh Install

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

If you’re wondering how to set up a GoDaddy Managed WordPress website, the process is straightforward. Installing WordPress is made easy with an install wizard that will initiate immediately after purchase of a Managed WordPress Hosting account in most cases, so your first step is to Buy a WordPress Hosting Plan.

The wizard will install WordPress and databases on your server and help you create a WordPress Admin Username. After going through all of the steps in the setup wizard your WordPress Admin Dashboard will “magically appear”. You’ll be logged in and ready to customize your website.

If you’ve purchased a Managed WordPress Hosting plan either from GoDaddy directly or Buckeye Web Development (thank you for your support) the process is the same. We’ll be using GoDaddy’s dashboard for the images in this walk-thru since they just look nicer than the super minimalist design of BWD’s reseller customer dashboard.

Start the Setup Wizard

The first thing to do is start the setup wizard after you’ve completed the purchase of your hosting plan. To do that just click the “Continue” button as shown in the left side of the image below. You can safely ignore the view receipt link and sign up for texts sections for now. A receipt will be emailed to you and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to sign up for alerts. For now, just focus on getting WordPress installed.

Create a New Website or Import an Existing Site?

The next step in the process is a screen that asks if you want to create a new WordPress site or import an existing one. For this example, we are going to create a new WordPress site, and you would click on that section. If you are importing an existing site I assume you already know what you are doing. If I’m wrong, that’s what the comments section at the bottom of this page is for. Holla!

Who are You Building This Site For?

The next screen in the wizard asks who you are building the site for. Unless you are developer you are building the site for yourself. Just select “For myself” and click the continue button located in the bottom right of that screen.

Select a Data Center

This is pretty straightforward, and GoDaddy usually gets it right. For the most part you can just leave that screen as it is and click the continue button located in the bottom right of that screen. If your customers or audience are in a region different from where you’re physically located, you might want to select your target audience’s region instead.

One thing to consider though is if you have a VPN enabled while going through the setup process, GoDaddy could use a server in an entirely different country. This could have all kinds of ill effects especially in dealing with currency, time zones and DNS. Just double check that your server is as close as possible to your core audience.

To AI or Not to AI? That is the Question

Yeah, don’t. I mean you can. Who am I to tell you what to do? But seriously, don’t. I know AI is supposed to make things easier, but in this case it really doesn’t. If you don’t understand exactly what the AI is going to do with each prompt you’re way better off to just skip ai and click “Start from scratch“. This way you’ll avoid one of those “it sounded good at the time” moments. Trust me on this one.

Choose a WordPress Admin Username

In this next screen you’ll be asked to choose a username. This will be your WordPress admin username. It has superpowers, so choose wisely, and write it down. You will not be asked for a password at this time since you can always log into your WordPress dashboard from your GoDaddy or BWD hosting dashboard. I’ll cover how to keep that username private and set a new password in another article.

The wizard will prefill the field with the text “username” followed by a randomly generated 4-digit number. It will look something like this: wpusername5555. You can just leave it as-is, but I recommend changing that since the usernames generated by the install wizard all start with “wpusername” making it easier to guess. The text below the input field outlines the username criteria. The checkmarks should turn green as you satisfy your overlor… Err, I mean the criteria.

Logging Into Your New WordPress Dashboard as Admin

After the previous step if you are fast enough you might be able to click one of two buttons in the bottom right of the confirmation screen. “Edit site” or “Go to dashboard”. Unless you’re ready for it, WordPress will redirect you to your new dashboard and log you in as the administrator before you can blink. Congratulations! You just installed WordPress.

I’ll stop this article here, since we have finished installing WordPress using the automated installation wizard. If you purchased an annual (or longer) hosting subscription, you may have already set up the domain name. In this case the wizard may have already asked which domain you want to use. If not, you will want to purchase a domain and point it to your WordPress install. You can also point an existing domain. I’ll go over that in the next article covering the first steps you’ll need to take after installing WordPress.

With all that out of the way, what did you think? Did this Guide on How to set up GoDaddy Managed WordPress help you get your WordPress website and running? Did you read the guide before or after attempting install? Did you experience any hiccups you would like me to cover in future guides? Let me know in the comment section. Thank you for stopping by!