How to connect a website you already have

If you already run a WordPress site, your operators can work on it rather than building you a new one.

What you need first

• A WordPress site you can log in to as an administrator.
• The address of the site.

Connect it

1. Go to Your website in the sidebar.
2. Select Connect a site.
3. Enter your site address and follow the steps.
4. Approve the connection from inside your own WordPress admin when asked.

Once it says Active, your operators can work on it.

If you run the setup wizard on it

The setup wizard is a first build, and a first build works without stopping to ask. On a site you already run, that means it can activate a new theme, install plugins, publish new pages, set your site name, and remove the “Hello world!” post and the “Sample Page” that WordPress itself ships with, as long as you never edited them.

Your own work is protected. The first build never overwrites a page, post or product you already have, and it never deletes your drafts. When a page it wants to add has the same address or the same name as one of yours, it saves its own version as a draft next to yours, under the same address with “-wpmaven” added, and tells you which of your pages it left alone: the wizard’s closing screen lists them, and so does the WhatsApp message you get when your pages are written, if you have linked WhatsApp. Compare the two and choose. The build does not edit, delete or unpublish a page of yours, and it never turns one of your pages into the homepage or the blog page. It leaves your homepage, your blog page and your shop page as they are, and a menu of yours that happens to share a name with the one it plans keeps every item: the wizard builds its own menu under a separate name instead.

Only you can start it. A member of the WPMaven team looking at your account with you can see the wizard, but cannot run the build on your behalf.

Take a backup first if you want one, and skip the wizard if you would rather your site stayed as it is: connecting alone changes nothing, and your operators can start from your next request instead.

What changes on your site

After that, every change your operators want to make to it (a page, a post, a plugin, a setting) waits for your yes under Waiting for you, and none of them happens until you approve it. They do not redesign what you already have unless you ask them to. See How to approve or change what gets published.

If you are on the Minimum or the Launch plan, a small “Built with WPMaven” line is added to your site footer. Operator, Scale and White label have no badge. See What each plan includes.

If the connection fails

The usual causes are a security plugin blocking the connection, or an account that is not a full administrator. Check both, then try again. If it still fails, tell your Co-CEO what you saw and it will pass it on.