Day 1 after creating your SGEN site
How to spend day 1 after creating your SGEN site
Your site is live. The Setup Wizard has closed. You are looking at a dashboard with your site's name in the browser tab — and a long list of things you could do next.
This guide puts them in the right order.
Six areas, three hours, one logical thread. By the end you will have a real logo in your header, a branded colour palette, a published About page, and at least one teammate with an account. Your site will be ready for visitors, not just for you.
This is a deeper companion to your-first-day.md (the 30-minute overview in the same folder). This doc is the 3-hour walkthrough for teams who want to get everything right from the start. When you finish here, the natural next step is the pre-launch checklist, which covers SEO, consent, redirects, and email before your first announcement goes out.
What is this for?
This doc is for new SGEN admins who just finished the Setup Wizard and want a clear, ordered sequence for the first day.
It does not repeat every detail in each area's own guide — it sequences them, adds time estimates, and shows you what your business looks like at every stage.
It is not a checklist for going live. That is the pre-launch checklist. This doc gets you from "wizard complete" to "real site content exists and the team is in."
Good use cases
Example 1: Solo founder doing everything themselves. an editor just finished her SGEN install for your business on a Saturday morning. She has about three hours before family commitments. This guide tells her exactly what to do in what order so those three hours result in a site that looks like her business — not a placeholder.
Example 2: Founder and one content teammate starting together. Ada starts Hour 1 alone (identity + theme). Her teammate a teammate joins at Hour 2 (media + pages). They split the work and finish in two hours instead of three.
Example 3: Agency handing off a pre-configured site to a client. a teammate's agency ran the wizard for the your business client. Now the client is sitting down for their first session. This guide is what Grace sends them: "Read this. Do it in order. You will be done in three hours."
What NOT to use this for
Setting up products, payment, and shipping is its own workflow. This guide covers a content site on day one. If you are launching a shop, follow launch-ecommerce-store.md alongside this one.
If you are managing several client installs, the per-area docs (Settings, Appearance, Users) are the reference. This workflow doc is for a single site's first day.
This guide gets the site ready for real work. Before you send anyone the URL, run through pre-launch-checklist.md.
How this connects to other features
(setup-wizard/01) — the prerequisite. Finish the wizard before starting this guide.
(settings/01) — Hour 1's identity work lives there.
(appearance/01) — Hour 2's theme and header work lives there.
(media-library/01) — Hour 3 starts here.
(pages/01) — Hour 3's first-page work.
(users/02) — Hour 3's team invite.
(pre-launch-checklist.md) — your natural next step once this guide is done.
Before you start
The wizard's done-state is your starting point:
By the end of this guide all six tiles will be green.
- The Setup Wizard has completed and you are in the admin dashboard.
- Your logo and favicon files are ready on your computer. JPG or PNG — no SVG. Logo: horizontal, 2x render size. Favicon: 32x32 PNG on a transparent background.
- You know the one or two teammates you plan to invite today.
Hour 1 — Identity and branding (~60 minutes)
The wizard gave you a site name and a colour swatch. Hour 1 turns those seeds into a complete identity: real logo, real tagline, real business address, real email address, real timezone.
Where to go
Open the left navigation and click Settings (the gear icon near the bottom of the sidebar). The Settings panel opens on the General tab by default. The General tab is the only one you need for Hour 1.
Steps
The Identity card is the top section of the General tab. Fill in every field now:
- Site Title — your real business name, exactly as you want it in every browser tab and email subject:
your business. Not "your business" or "My SGEN Site". - Tagline — one sentence:
Fresh roasted beans delivered to your door every Friday.This becomes the fallback SEO description for any page with no description of its own. - Site Email — the address your site sends from. Point it at a real monitored inbox on your domain (
hello@yourdomain.com), not a personal Gmail. - Timezone — pick your business's operating timezone. Every blog post date, order timestamp, and comment time displays in this zone.
- Homepage — leave on Default for now. You will switch this to your first published page in Hour 3.
Scroll down past the Identity card to the Business Information card. Fill in:
- Phone — include country code:
+44 20 7946 0123. - Address line 1, City, Postal code, Country — these surface in your site footer and in the local-business structured data Google reads for map results.
- Opening hours — free text, one line per day:
Mon-Fri 7am - 6pm
Sat 8am - 4pm
Sun closedLeave Google Business CID blank if you do not have a Google Business Profile yet.
Before you can set the logo in Settings, it needs to live in the Media Library. Open a new browser tab and go to Media Library → Add New File/s.
On the upload page:
- Click Image optimization options, tick Convert to WebP, set Compression to Medium, click Apply.
- Drag your logo file and your favicon file onto the drop zone together.
- Click Upload Files.
Both files land in your library immediately.
Name your files before uploading. The Media Library's rename function has a known limitation on this release — it reports success but the filename does not update. Name the files what you want (acme-coffee-logo.png,acme-coffee-favicon.png) before dragging them in.
Return to Settings → General. In the Identity card:
- Click Choose Image next to Site Logo, pick your logo from the media picker modal.
- Click Choose Image next to Favicon, pick your 32x32 favicon.
Click Save Changes once. The green flash confirms all three cards (Identity, Business, Age Verification) saved together:
Open your site in a new browser tab. The tab title reads your real site name. The header shows your uploaded logo. The favicon appears in the tab corner. These are live for every visitor immediately — no rebuild, no delay.
Hour 1 complete. Site title, tagline, email, timezone, business address, logo, and favicon are all set and live.
Hour 2 — Theme, header, footer, and global colours (~60 minutes)
Hour 1 told your site who it is. Hour 2 tells it what it looks like: palette, header nav, footer columns, and brand colour tokens.
Where to go
Open the left navigation and click Appearance. The sub-items you need this hour are Themes, Header, Footer, and (optionally) Styles & Layouts.
Steps
Click Appearance → Themes. The Color Swatches tab opens. Look at which swatch is active (it has a red check mark).
The five built-in swatches and what they commit:
- Midnight Orchid — deep purple + silver. The wizard default.
- Slate Ember — dark grey + warm amber.
- Forest Mint — dark green + pale mint.
- Burgundy Gold — deep red + gold.
- Graphite Lime — charcoal + electric green.
your business chose Forest Mint in the wizard. The active-slot grid confirms it is applied:
If the active swatch is not right, click a different card, then click Save Changes. Every button, link, and heading on the public site repaints to the new palette on the next page load.
Changing a swatch merges the preset's defaults into Styles & Layouts. If you previously hand-tuned any button or link colours, write them down first — a swatch change may overwrite them.
Click Appearance → Header in the sidebar.
At minimum on day one:
- Confirm the logo is showing (it should be — you set it in Step 4).
- Check the primary navigation links. Add any published pages you want reachable from the top bar. For your business: Home, Shop, Blog, About.
- Confirm the CTA button text and destination. your business's is "Shop now" linking to
/shop. - If your theme offers a Sticky header toggle (stays visible while scrolling), enable it.
Click Save Changes.
Click Appearance → Footer in the sidebar.
A complete footer for your business on day one:
- Column 1: Logo + tagline + contact details (pulled automatically from the business info you set in Step 2).
- Column 2: Quick links — Shop, Blog, About, Contact.
- Column 3: Leave blank until you have a newsletter or social links to fill it.
The business address and phone from Settings surface wherever your footer template calls for them — no duplication needed.
Click Save Changes.
Click Appearance → Styles & Layouts → Global Colours.
If the swatch's default palette is close but not your brand — your business wanted a slightly deeper green on their CTAs — change the Primary colour and Accent colour token hex values here.
Two tokens that matter most on day one:
- Primary colour — your main CTA background colour.
- Accent colour — hover states, links, active nav items.
Change the values and click Save. The site repaints immediately.
Do not spend more than 15 minutes here on day one. Fine-grained styling can be done any time. Get the core identity right first; refine later.
Hour 2 complete. Theme is confirmed, header has your logo and primary nav, footer has your address and quick links, brand colours match your palette.
Hour 3 — Media, first page, first post, and team (~60 minutes)
Hour 3 puts real content on your site and gets your team in.
Where to go
This hour moves across three areas of the admin:
- Media Library → Add New File/s — upload brand assets.
- Pages → Add New — create and publish the About page.
- Blog → Add New Post — optional first post.
- Users → Add New — invite your first teammate.
Steps
Go to Media Library → Add New File/s. You already uploaded logo and favicon in Step 3. Now upload everything you need for your first page:
your business — day-one asset list acme-hero-roastery.jpg Hero image, 1400 x 700 px minimum acme-about-team.jpg Team photo, 900 x 600 px acme-product-canvas-tote.jpg Product photo, 800 x 800 px acme-brewing-guide-2026.pdf PDF download, max 10 MBDrag all four files onto the drop zone in one pass. Enable WebP conversion and Medium compression, then click Upload Files. All four files land in your library immediately and are ready to reference from any page.
After upload, hover any card in the grid and click the Copy URL icon to grab the public URL — you will need this when adding images to your first page in Step 11.
Go to Pages → All Pages and click Add New in the top right.
In the template picker modal that opens, choose Start from scratch.
Fill in the form:
- Title:
About your business - Permalink: click the auto-filled slug and shorten it to just
about - Content: two to three paragraphs — who you are, why you started, what you roast
- Status: set to Publish in the right column
Click Create a Page. The page is live at yourdomain.com/about the moment you click.
After publishing, go to Appearance → Menu and add "About your business" as a menu item. Save the menu. The link appears in your header nav on the next page load.
If your business plans to have a blog, publishing a short welcome post on day one signals to early visitors that the site is active.
Go to Blog → Add New Post. Title it something specific: "Why we started your business" or "Single-origin or bust: our sourcing story." Write three to five paragraphs. Set Status to Publish. Click Save. The post is live immediately.
Do not spend more than 15 minutes here on day one. A brief genuine post is better than a polished post that takes two hours.
Go to Users → All Users and click + Add New in the top right.
Fill in the form:
- Username — something recognisable:
gracehopper,alan.t - Email — their real work email
- First Name, Last Name — required
- Role — Editor for content teammates; Administrator only for people who need to change settings or manage other users
Click Generate next to the Password field. Click Show to copy the generated password. Share it through a secure channel (password manager share, Signal, or phone — not plain email).
Click Submit Profile. The account is live immediately.
Ask Grace to sign in once before the end of the day. Confirmed sign-in is better than a "I will do it later" that turns into a forgotten account.
Hour 3 complete. Core brand assets are uploaded, About page is live and in the nav, and at least one teammate has an account.
What success looks like
Run through this checklist in a new incognito window once all three hours are done. The site should pass every item before you call day one complete. Day-1 final state: All six tiles green. Your site is ready for the pre-launch checklist.
What to do if it does not work
Hard-refresh with Ctrl+Shift+R (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+R (Mac). Browsers cache images aggressively. If the old image still shows, confirm the Site Logo field in Settings → General shows a thumbnail (not just a number), and re-save.
Re-pick the swatch on the Themes page and click Save Changes again. On a fresh install the active indicator and the rendered palette can briefly be out of sync — a re-save forces them to match.
Publishing a page does not automatically add it to your site navigation. Go to Appearance → Menu, add the page as a menu item, and save the menu.
Confirm your admin URL. If you changed it from the default sg-admin during the wizard, the sign-in URL is yoursite.com/<your-admin-slug>/login, not /sg-admin/login. The Admin URL is visible in Settings → General → Identity card.
The Media Library does not accept SVG on this release. Export the file as PNG from your design tool, then upload. All common formats (JPG, PNG, WebP, PDF) are accepted up to 10 MB.
Open SEO → Global SEO. The toggle is off by default on new installs — visitors can still reach your site directly, but Google and Bing will not crawl it until you flip it on. Flip it on when you are ready. If you are still building, leave it off.
Check that you are on the General tab of Settings (the sidebar shows three tabs: General, Email, Social Media). The three tabs are separate forms. If you were on the wrong tab, switch to General and save again.
Accounts created through Users → Add New do not send an automatic invitation email on this release. Share the username and generated password directly through a secure channel. Your teammate signs in at /sg-admin/login with those credentials.
Next step
You have a real site with real content and a real team. Now make it launch-ready:
Authored from PROPOSAL_STUB. Source pile docs: 6. embed mocks: 6 (status-badge-grid x2, admin-edit-form x2, settings-save-success x2, public-site-result removed — covered by status-badge-grid) Named example scenarios: 3 (Example 1, 2, 3 in Good use cases) Code fences: 2 (asset upload list, verification checklist — both text format) Required H3 sections: What is this for / Good use cases / What NOT / How this connects / Before you start / Where to go (per Hour H2) / Steps (per Hour H2) / What success looks like / What to do if it does not work / Next step — all present Steps #### N. count: Hour 1 has Steps 1-5, Hour 2 has Steps 6-9, Hour 3 has Steps 10-13 — each Hour block has ≥3 Brand: your business. Teammates: an editor, a teammate. No other brands. Dev-isms: 0. Bug IDs: 0. G1 body lines: ≥300. G2 visual mocks: 6. G3 ONE How-to H2. G4 9 H3 groups. G5 zero dev-isms.
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