The philosophy and purpose of LaunchKit is to offer the lowest number of components possible, and to avoid using custom plugin or theme options to start.
In doing so, we can provide a common starting point for anyone in the WordPress community who wishes to further customize or add features/components to do so, without forcing them upon everyone or adding needless complexity.
Themes & Custom Block Plugins
LaunchKit Sites can be used with ANY WordPress theme, and does not require Full Site Editing. In fact, we suggest you avoid using FSE type themes for now, because they add a layer of needless complexity and are currently in a very transitional phase.
In order to get you started, we have curated four of the most popular free themes into your LaunchKit site: Blocksy, Kadence, Astra & GeneratePress. Out of the box, we have chosen Blocksy, but you can simply switch to any theme you wish using the Appearance/Theme option in your admin dashboard.
*Note – It is not necessary to use the pro versions of any of these themes, nor do you need to use any of their pro block plugins. While you may choose to upgrade later, we have specifically curated LaunchKit to work well with 100% free themes and plugins.
Set The Admin Email & Delete Other Admins
LaunchKit Sites (and the LaunchKit plugin) provide a handy feature to bypass the default WordPress requirement that the previously registered site admin approve the change of email. If you have purchased LaunchKit Full Ownership, this allows you to quickly and easily adjust (if necessary) the administrative email of your site to the final version.
If you have purchased LaunchKit Full Ownership, you may also find an additional admin profile in your site.
*Note – Please delete any extra admin profile before going “live” with your migrated site (assign all content to your own profile).
Setup Your Stripe Keys For WooCommerce
LaunchKit sites will work immediately with our demonstration keys for Stripe. This makes it super easy to immediately try actual checkouts with credit cards.
If you have purchased LaunchKit Full Ownership, you should setup your own credentials and options using the Stripe Gateway before you go live. Full instructions on how to do that are here.
You are not limited to only using this free Stripe Gateway. You may use any gateway or payment method you wish is compatible with WooCommerce.
Setup Your Own SMTP Service
LaunchKit sites will work immediately with our SMTP service while you are using our demo sites or during the setup period of our Full Ownership sites.
If you have purchased LaunchKit Full Ownership, you should enable the Fluent SMTP plugin and configure it to work with any of the SMTP hosts or drivers included therein. This will ensure that your outbound marketing & transactional emails are properly delivered. Full instructions on how to setup Fluent SMTP are here.
Configure WooCommerce Details
If you have purchased LaunchKit Full Ownership, you will want to add your store address details into WooCommerce / Settings / General as well as make sure that you have also customized your Email templates and branding into WooCommerce / Emails.
Before going live, be sure that any of the sample references for email, product names, pricing and more have been updated to your brand and products.
By default, LaunchKit Sites have the WooCommerce / Checkout / Billing fields configured to disable all fields other than First Name, Last Name & Email. The shipping fields are unchanged.
If for any reason you need to collect different address information for billing in addition to shipping, go to WooCommerce / Checkout / Billing Fields and click “Reset” to enable all the disabled fields (or you may do it manually on the right side by sliding the Disabled switch to the left). See below.
