Quick Guide to Haverford Sites and WordPress

This is a quick guide to Haverford Sites and WordPress. If you need more detailed information, please see the documentation section.

STEP 1: Create Your Domain Name

  1. Go to sites.haverford.edu.
  2. Click Get Started button.
  3. Type your Haverford email username and password.
  4. Choose Your Subdomain (eg. http://xxxxx.sites.haverford.edu)

    Note: We ask that you keep your (sub)domain name until you leave Haverford. Please choose it carefully.

STEP 2: Install WordPress

  1. Once you are in the Dashboard/cPanel, click the WordPress icon under Applications.
  2. Click +install this application button.
  3. For Domain, choose the https// option. (eg. https://demo.sites.haverford.edu).  (Note the s there.)
  4. If you are creating this site for your class, you might want to create a directory for your class. Type the directory name (e.g. en101) under Directory (Optional). You do not need to have anything for the directory if this site is going to be your main website.
  5. Scroll down to Settings. Change the Administrator Username and Administrator Password.  
  6. Scroll down to the end of the page and click +Install.

STEP 3: Set Up Encrypted Access (HTTPS)

It is a best practice to encrypt your WordPress sites. There are two steps to ensure that your sites are encrypted.

  1. Install WordPress to the right domain.
    When you install WordPress, as you did in STEP 2, choose https://  instead of http://  for the domain.
    If you forgot to do that, you can fix it after you installed WordPress. To fix it,

    1. Go to your WordPress site admin panel. (If you are not sure how, watch the last video on this page.)
    2. From the side navigation menu, choose Settings>General.
    3. Add s next to http in both WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL).
      (eg. https://demo.sites.haverford.edu/eng101)
    4. Scroll down to the bottom and click Save Changes.
  2. Force HTTPS Redirect.
    SSL certificates are automatically provisioned to all domains hosted with Haverford Sites. In order to ensure that users are accessing the HTTPS version of your site, you’ll need to “Force HTTPS Redirect”.

    1. Go to your Haverford Sites Dashboard.
    2. Select “Domains”.
    3. Scroll down to the list of your active domains.
    4. Make sure that “Force HTTPS Redirect” is toggled on.

Alternatively, you can also manually force your domain from HTTP to HTTPS by editing the .htaccess file. 

Now your site should be secure. Visit your site and click a link on the page such as MY BLOG. The URL should have a padlock to tell you that your WordPress is now encrypted and secure.

Two ways to access the admin area of a WordPress site

  • From cPanel
  1. Go to sites.haverford.edu
  2. Click Dashboard
  3. Type your Haverford email username and password
  4. Click My Apps under APPLICATIONS
  5. Click the URL with /wp-admin/ at the end (eg. demo.sites.haverford.edu/eng101/wp-admin).
  • From yoursiteURL/wp-admin
  1. Type the URL of your site with /wp-admin at the end of the URL (eg.demo.sites.haverford.edu/en101/wp-admin).
  2. Type your WordPress site username and password you set when you installed WordPress in STEP 2.

WordPress Resources

There are a lot of resources on WordPress online.

Note: If you want to post multimedia, especially videos, upload them to cloud services (eg. YouTube, Vimeo) first. Then copy the URL of the video and paste the URL to the post. You have 1 GB storage limit. You do not want to upload any big files directly to your WordPress site.