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Placing your first order

Before you start

  • A CloudPress account you're signed in to
  • A payment method you can enter at checkout1
  • Optional: a domain name in mind, if you want to register one during checkout

This guide walks a brand-new customer through creating their first WordPress site from the dashboard — choosing a plan and region, optionally buying a domain, paying, and watching the site provision. It's the happy path; you won't need any technical setup. You build an order in a cart, pay once at checkout, and CloudPress then provisions your site automatically in the background; one cart produces one payment, and provisioning usually finishes in a few minutes.

The same cart and checkout handle everything else you can buy, so the payment and order-status steps below apply just as well to ordering a Mailspace, ordering cPanel hosting and purchasing a domain on their own.

Steps

  1. Open the New Site screen. Use the New menu — in the header on a wide screen, in the sidebar drawer on a narrow one — and choose New Site. On a workspace with no sites yet, My Sites shows No Sites Found with an Add your first WordPress site button that goes to the same place, and new accounts land there automatically right after signing up. The page is titled Generate Your WordPress Site.

  2. Choose where your data is stored. Under Where do you want your website data to be stored?, pick the region closest to your visitors.

  3. Choose how to start. Under How do you want to start?, pick one:

    • Start with a plain WordPress Installation — a clean WordPress site.
    • Build a new WordPress site with our AI Site Builder — starts you in the Extendify site builder.

    Then press Continue.

    Tip

    Your starting point (the option you pick here) is fixed once the site is created, so choose the one that matches what you're building.

  4. Select your package. On the Select your package screen, pick the plan that fits your site. If both billing terms are offered, use the Monthly / Annual toggle at the top — the cards repaint with that term's prices as soon as you flip it, so set the term before you compare.2 Choose a plan, then press Continue.

  5. Review your cart and (optionally) add a domain. You're now on your cart, with an Order summary showing the Due today total.

    If your plan includes a free domain, or you want to buy one, use the Choose your domain card: type the name into Domain name, press Search, and add it from the results. Where free extensions apply, the card's description carries an asterisk that opens a Free domain extensions panel listing the ones available at no cost for the first year.3 The domain is registered during checkout and becomes your new site's domain automatically once both are ready — no manual step.4

    You can continue without a domain. CloudPress generates a temporary domain for your WordPress hosting automatically, and you can connect your own domain later.

    When the cart looks right, choose Continue. On a cart with no domain to register there is nothing to collect, so the button reads Continue to Payment and you can skip straight to step 7.

  6. Give the domain's contact details. Registries require a registrant on record, so a cart that registers or transfers a domain adds a short panel before payment. Fill in Contact details and press Validate & continue; if you already have domains with us, a Contact source step comes first so you can pick Use existing contact instead of Create new contact. When the cart holds two or more domains, a Primary domain step asks which one your site should use — confirm it with Confirm primary domain. The panel finishes on Review, and Continue to Payment becomes available from the order summary.

    Some extensions verify the contact by email

    Where the registry requires it, the Review step says so: a verification email goes to the contact address, and the registration proceeds once the contact is verified.

  7. Enter your billing details and payment method. On the payment page:

    • Fill in Billing details (name, address, and — if applicable — a VAT ID) and save them. The Payment method step stays greyed out with Save your billing details to continue until you do.
    • Enter your Payment method in the secure payment field.

    Nothing is charged until you click the pay button, and the amount shown is the amount you'll pay — if the total changes before you confirm (for example, tax recalculates), you're re-prompted rather than charged a surprise amount.

    Two workspaces see a different payment screen

    • If your workspace's billing is handled by a parent workspace and you can't manage that billing yourself, there is no billing form and no payment field. You get the order summary, the note This amount will automatically be charged to the workspace {name}, and a Place order button.
    • A workspace billed outside CloudPress gets the order summary and a Process order button, with no payment field at all.

  8. Confirm and pay. Click the pay button, which reads Pay followed by your total. If account credit covers the whole amount, or nothing is due today, it reads Confirm change instead. If your bank asks for an extra verification step, complete it when prompted.

  9. Watch provisioning finish. You land on the Order status page. It starts at Finalizing your order and updates itself automatically — you can leave it open. When it reads Your order is complete, your site is ready, and you'll also get a confirmation email.5

The status page refreshes on its own as your order moves from Queued → Processing → Completed. When it's done, use Open site to jump straight to your new site.

The same off-session cart flow is available programmatically. POST /api/orders charges your default payment method and provisions a WordPress site, always returning a 202 Accepted cart envelope:

curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $CLOUDPRESS_TOKEN" \
  -H "X-Auth-Account: $ACCOUNT_ID" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"site":{"name":"my-site","variant":"vanilla","location":"pdx","plan":"basic","term":"monthly"}}' \
  https://my.cloudpress.com/api/orders

The response's cart.poll_url (/api/carts/<token>) is empty of orders during the async window — poll it until the orders materialize and reach a terminal state:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $CLOUDPRESS_TOKEN" -H "X-Auth-Account: $ACCOUNT_ID" \
  https://my.cloudpress.com/api/carts/$CART_TOKEN

Order create/update/cancel are not available with an OAuth token — they require a session or API-key credential. See Orders & Carts and the authentication overview for details.

If something needs your attention

The status page has a headline for each outcome. The ones worth knowing:

  • Waiting for payment — we haven't received payment yet; re-open the checkout to finish. On a workspace whose billing is handled by a parent account, ask your billing administrator to complete it.
  • Something went wrong — our team is automatically notified. Contact support if you need help.
  • Order couldn't be completed — provisioning failed after the payment went through, and we've refunded the payment to your card.
  • Order cancelled — the order was cancelled and no charges were made.
  • Order held — unpaid invoices on file — settle your open invoices to release the order.

Next steps

  1. Which methods the payment field offers depends on your workspace's billing currency. On EUR billing the dashboard names iDEAL, SEPA Direct Debit, Bancontact and card; on other currencies it doesn't enumerate them, so treat the payment field itself as the authority. ↩

  2. If a plan only offers one billing term, no toggle is shown — there's nothing to choose. ↩

  3. Premium domains aren't included in the free-domain offer, and a free domain renews at its normal price after the first year. ↩

  4. This applies when a single domain is registered alongside the site in the same cart. With two or more domains in one cart, checkout adds the Primary domain step so you choose which one the site uses; the others stay in your workspace and you attach them to a site whenever you like. ↩

  5. Provisioning runs asynchronously after payment and most sites are ready in a few minutes. CloudPress claims a pre-built site from inventory rather than building one from scratch, which is why it's quick. In the rare case capacity is temporarily unavailable in your chosen region, the order can be retried shortly after. ↩