Why a Setup Checklist
A Bricks site that’s set up right stays fast and quiet for years. A site that’s set up sloppily fights you from day one — fonts that vanish, plugins that slow every page, settings you discover six months too late. This checklist exists so you do the boring, important things once, in the right order, and never think about them again.
Everything below takes about 30 minutes on a fresh install. You’ll do most of it only once per site.
Before You Start
- Use a clean WordPress install — no demo content, no “sample” plugins, no bundled page builders
- Install Bricks from your account downloads page (not a third-party source) and activate the license
- Set up a staging environment before touching a live site, or at least a full backup
- Know your PHP version (7.4+ recommended, 8.1+ ideal) — check it in WordPress → Tools → Site Health
WordPress Settings
- Permalinks — Settings → Permalinks → set to “Post name”. Bricks and SEO both assume clean URLs, and changing this later breaks links
- Search visibility — Settings → Reading → leave “Discourage search engines” unchecked unless you’re staging
- Timezone and date format — set to your business timezone so post dates and dynamic dates render correctly
- Delete default content — remove the sample “Hello World” post, sample page and unused default plugins (Akismet, Hello Dolly)
- Media settings — set reasonable thumbnail sizes so Bricks image templates have predictable dimensions
Bricks Core Settings
- Bricks → Settings → General — pick your content width (1200 px is a safe default; 1360 px feels more modern for marketing sites) and set the page gutter
- Bricks → Settings → Performance — enable “Disable emojis”, “Disable dashicons on front-end”, and CSS/JS minification. These three alone cut 100-200 KB from every page
- Bricks → Settings → API Keys — paste your Google Maps key if you use the map element; leave empty otherwise
- Bricks → Settings → Theme Styles — set Global Colors and Typography before building anything. Colors and fonts set here cascade into every element
- Bricks → Settings → Breakpoints — confirm the default breakpoints (1280 / 992 / 768 / 480) match your design targets; add custom ones before you need them, not after
Fonts and Assets
- Localize Google Fonts — under Bricks → Settings → Fonts, download and serve fonts locally (or use a local font service). This removes a third-party request, improves privacy and satisfies GDPR
- Preload your main font — add the font file to the preload list in Bricks performance settings so first paint isn’t blocked
Plugin Stack
- Install only what you need. A lean Bricks stack is: Bricks + ACF (or Meta Box) + an SEO plugin + a cache plugin + a security plugin. Every extra plugin is a page-speed tax
- For caching, test LiteSpeed (on LiteSpeed hosts), WP Rocket or Perfmatters — pick one, don’t stack two
- If you’re serious about speed, add Perfmatters to disable unused scripts page-by-page — it’s the single best performance plugin in the Bricks ecosystem
Quick Verification
- Run PageSpeed Insights on your home page — a fresh Bricks site should hit 90+ without touching a single performance plugin
- Check the front end on mobile — tap through a page with a hamburger menu
- Confirm the editor loads — open Bricks on any page and save an empty edit
- Verify fonts render — the page should show your chosen typeface, not a fallback
The Habit That Follows
The 15 checks above are a one-time cost. What keeps a Bricks site healthy afterwards is a lighter habit — a 10-minute weekly pass. Updates, cache clears, a PageSpeed glance. That habit is worth its own checklist, and it’s the next guide in this series.
