Most WordPress launch checklists are written by people who have never watched a non-developer try to follow one. They list forty-seven steps, half of them optional, and bury the two settings that will actually stop your store from taking money. This is the version I use, in the order I use it, with the reasoning attached so you know what you can skip.
Start with hosting and a domain that resolves before you touch WordPress. I mean it: confirm the DNS is live by visiting the bare domain in a browser and getting something — even a placeholder page. Half the ‘WordPress is broken’ panics I’ve seen trace back to a domain still propagating. Install WordPress through your host’s one-click installer, then immediately set permalinks to Post name under Settings > Permalinks. Do this before you build anything, because changing it later breaks links you’ve already shared.
Next, pick a theme you’re not going to fight. For a store, a block theme built for WooCommerce (Storefront, Twenty Twenty-Four with a shop pattern, or a lightweight commercial option) beats a multipurpose theme with forty demo imports. The test is simple: can you get a product grid and a cart icon on the page in under ten minutes without reading documentation? If not, switch themes. You are not going to out-customize a bloated theme on a weekend.
Now the plugin list, and I keep it short on purpose. WooCommerce first, obviously, and run its setup wizard even though it’s annoying — it creates the pages (Shop, Cart, Checkout, My Account) that everything else assumes exist. Then a payment gateway: Stripe for cards, and add PayPal only if you’ve actually had customers ask. A free SSL is handled by your host; verify the padlock shows on checkout before launch, not after. Add one SEO plugin (Rank Math or Yoast, doesn’t matter, pick one and stop comparing), one caching plugin (whatever your host recommends, because conflicts here are the number one cause of mystery whitespace), and one backup plugin set to run daily.
That’s five plugins. Resist the urge to add a sixth. Every plugin is a future update conflict, and on a weekend timeline you want the smallest surface area that still works. If you find yourself installing something to solve a problem you haven’t had yet, close the tab.
The settings people forget, in rough order of how much pain they cause. First: WooCommerce > Settings > General, set the store address and currency correctly — the currency is a pain to change once orders exist. Second: Settings > Products > Inventory, decide whether you’re tracking stock at all. For digital or made-to-order goods, turn stock management off entirely so you don’t get ‘out of stock’ on something that can’t run out. Third: Settings > Accounts and Privacy, turn off guest checkout only if you have a reason; for a first store, leaving it on removes a whole class of abandoned-cart excuses.
Fourth, and this is the one that bites: email deliverability. WordPress by default sends order emails through your web host’s mail function, which lands in spam more often than not. Install an SMTP plugin, connect it to a transactional service (Postmark, Brevo, whatever’s free at your volume), and send yourself a real test order. If the confirmation lands in your inbox instead of spam, you’ve cleared the biggest hidden failure mode of a new store.
Then build exactly one product, fully. Real name, real price, real description, real image. Not a test product called ‘Test’ — an actual thing you intend to sell. Because the next step is a live test order through the real gateway, and you want to see what a customer sees. Use Stripe’s test mode first, then flip to live and buy your own product with a real card for the smallest amount you can set. Refund yourself afterward. The twenty minutes this takes will catch misconfigured webhooks, wrong currency symbols, and checkout pages that render but don’t submit.
Finally, before you call it launched: check the site on your phone. Not the responsive preview in the browser — an actual phone, over cellular data, not your home wifi. Load the shop page, add to cart, check out. If that works on a phone on a train, you’re done. Everything else — the logo refinement, the fourth product, the email newsletter popup — is next week’s problem. The point of a weekend launch is a store that takes money. Polish is a habit you can afford once the first sale clears.