Building an E-Commerce Site Series: Digital Foundations & Core Setup

This session covers the essential infrastructure required to launch a secure online store from scratch. The lessons begin with Web Infrastructure 101, which explains the relationship between domains, DNS settings, nameservers, and web hosting servers. Students will then learn the critical differences between open-source WordPress.org and the commercial WordPress.com platform to understand why a self-hosted environment is mandatory for e-commerce. Next, the class will move into hands-on deployment, where students will navigate a hosting control panel to perform a clean, automated one-click WordPress installation. This is followed immediately by the Security Lock Protocol lesson, which teaches students how to activate and force a site-wide SSL Certificate (HTTPS) to ensure all future customer transactions are fully encrypted. Finally, the session wraps up with Dashboard Housekeeping, showing students how to delete default sample files and configure clean, SEO-friendly permalink URL structures.