The first half hour after installation

1. Site name and address

“Settings → General”. The name goes into the tab title, emails and the footer; the site address is needed for emails and the sitemap.

2. Mail

“Settings → Mail”. While the sending method is “to a file”, no email goes anywhere and they pile up in `storage/mail`: a fresh site sends nothing to anyone. Choose “SMTP server”, save, fill in the mailbox details (the host gives them with the mailbox) and press “Check sending”. Without mail, password recovery and address confirmation do not work.

3. Hosting schedule

“System → System status → Queue”: copy the line from there into the hosting's task schedule (“Cron”). The queue is also worked through on visits to the site, but on a site nobody visits an email waits for the first guest. If the hosting has no schedule, that is fine: a site with visitors copes without it.

4. Password

If the owner's password was not made up by you, change it: your name in the top right corner → “Profile”.

5. Site rules

If registration is open, create a page with the rules and enter its address in “Settings → Users → Site rules address”: otherwise people agree to something they were not shown.

If you need to close the site

“Settings → General → Close the site for maintenance”: visitors see your page while you work as usual. Search engines are told “temporarily unavailable”, not “page not found”.