You’ve picked a theme, installed WooCommerce, added a product. You hit preview, add to cart, and… nothing. Or worse, you get a white screen. I’ve set up dozens of stores for side-hustlers, and the same five WordPress settings cause 90% of pre-launch failures. None of them are plugin bugs. They’re configuration defaults that were fine for a blog and fatal for a store.
1. Permalinks set to “Plain.” This is the one everybody misses. WordPress defaults to plain URLs like `?p=123`. WooCommerce needs pretty permalinks for cart and checkout pages to work. Go to Settings > Permalinks and choose “Post name.” That’s it. If your checkout page shows a 404 after this, go to WooCommerce > Status > Tools and click “Install pages” again — it regenerates the missing endpoints.
2. WordPress Address vs. Site Address mismatch. If you installed WordPress in a subfolder and then moved it, these two fields in Settings > General can disagree. The result: your store loads, but the cart redirects to a broken URL. Fix by making both URLs identical (usually `https://yourdomain.com`). If you use a staging site, don’t copy the database without updating these.
3. HTTPS not forced. Most hosts give you a free SSL certificate, but WordPress doesn’t automatically redirect HTTP to HTTPS. If your checkout page loads over HTTP, browsers flag it as “Not secure” and customers bail. Install a plugin like Really Simple SSL or add a redirect rule in your host’s panel. Then update both URLs in Settings > General to use `https://`.
4. Memory limit too low. The default 40MB or 64MB is fine for text posts. A store with a few plugins, a page builder, and image uploads will hit that ceiling and throw a fatal error at the worst moment. In your `wp-config.php`, add: `define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’);`. If your host caps it lower, ask support to raise it — most will.
5. Timezone and currency set to the wrong region. This sounds minor until your first order shows a timestamp from yesterday and your Stripe payout is off by a day. Set your timezone in Settings > General to a city, not a UTC offset. Then set your currency and selling location in WooCommerce > Settings > General. If you’re selling digital products, uncheck “Shipping” entirely to avoid confusing customers.
Bonus: The “Discourage search engines” checkbox. Under Settings > Reading, there’s a box that says “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.” It’s checked by default on some installs. If you launch and wonder why you get zero traffic, this is why. Uncheck it, save, and request indexing in Google Search Console.
Here’s a quick pre-launch checklist you can copy: (1) Permalinks = Post name. (2) Both URLs match and use HTTPS. (3) SSL forced. (4) Memory limit 256M. (5) Timezone = city, currency = correct, shipping disabled for digital. (6) Search engine visibility unchecked. (7) Test a real transaction with a 100% coupon.
That last step is the one people skip. Create a coupon for 100% off, add a product to cart, and go through checkout as a customer. You’ll catch payment gateway errors, missing email notifications, and thank-you page redirects before a real buyer does. It takes five minutes and saves you a refund request later.
None of these fixes require code. They’re all clicks or one line in a config file. The reason they trip up non-developers is that no single tutorial covers all five in one place — each plugin doc assumes the others are already correct. Start with permalinks, then work down the list. You’ll be at a working checkout faster than you think.