WebProCMS ships a guided, relaunchable Setup Tour (Dashboard → Setup, admin-only) that jump-starts a new site in ten stops, plus a persistent Setup Checklist that tracks what's done and links straight to the right dashboard page for everything that isn't. Neither is a one-shot: every stop writes real settings immediately, so you can leave anytime and pick up where you left off — the tour simply re-reads the site's current state.
How the tour works
Instead of duplicating dashboard screens inside a wizard, the tour walks you through the real pages. A floating coach card (bottom-right) follows you across the dashboard showing where you are (step x of 10 with progress dots), what to do on the current page, and live checkmarks that tick themselves as you complete each task. Continue moves to the next stop — often navigating you to the next real page, where the relevant card pulses briefly so your eye lands in the right place. Back retraces, the chevron collapses the card to a slim pill, and X exits the tour (progress is kept; resume anytime from the dashboard setup card). The coach never blocks: you can continue past any stop and return later.
Three stops have no single-page counterpart and live in the Setup Wizard at Dashboard → Setup (its ?step URL param uses the tour numbering — 7, 9, 10); the other seven are real dashboard pages. The tour starts (and resumes) from the sidebar's Setup link or the dashboard setup card:
- Welcome + AI (optional) — the real API Keys page. Add an AI provider key to unlock AI drafting and writing/image tools across the CMS — or skip entirely; the coach card carries the welcome framing and mentions the AI Site Generator ("have AI build the whole site").
- Business details — the real Business page. Name, tagline, summary, phone, email, address, hours, service areas, locations, timezone — plus the "Where are your customers?" spam-filter default. With AI connected, a Draft tagline & descriptions with AI button proposes a tagline, site description, and SEO description for your review.
- Logo & favicon — the real Branding page. Everything the Branding page can do is available mid-tour: media-library pickers, the AI logo generator (matched light + dark variants), AI favicon-from-logo, and the dark-background logo.
- Brand colors — the real Colors page. Primary/secondary/gray-scale palettes, the smart color picker, and public page colors.
- Look & feel — the real theme tab (Design Library → Theme). Confirm the theme the installer chose or switch its variant (color palette + fonts) — or change themes entirely.
- Header & footer — the real Header & Footer page, with the full design library, light/dark variants, and quick-edit — not a reduced wizard copy.
- Pages — wizard. Asks "What kind of website is this?" (the site-type preset driving all suggestions), then offers a pre-checked list of suggested starter pages — plumbers get Areas We Serve and Financing, churches get I'm New and Ministries — created in one click, each starting with the site's page-title band. Below that, suggested content sections (Services, Team, FAQs, …) scaffold a full content type with listing + detail pages.
- Navigation — the real Menus page, including reordering, dropdowns, and mega menus.
- Recommended add-ons — wizard. A curated, pre-checked list for your site type and theme; enabling runs each add-on's setup (including migrations) with visible progress. Everything can be toggled later under Settings → Features — disabling never deletes data.
- Finish — wizard. The full checklist with links and manual "mark done" toggles, and a Finish setup button that ends the tour.
All navigation lives on the coach card: Back/Continue plus a jump-to-any-stop list behind the progress dots. Wizard steps keep only their action buttons (create pages, enable add-ons, finish).
The setup checklist
The checklist tracks thirteen items — business details, logo, favicon, brand colors, theme confirmed, header/footer chosen, core pages created, menu built, Terms & Privacy reviewed, timezone, add-ons reviewed, plus two optional items (AI key, default social share image). Items auto-detect where a cheap settings probe can tell (logo set, brand colors saved, phone saved, menu grown past the seeded two links); the judgment-call items are marked manually — or automatically when you continue past their tour stop.
It surfaces in three places:
- A dashboard card ("Finish setting up your site") with a progress bar, the next three open items, and a Start/Resume setup tour button that drops you at the tour's current stop — even mid-tour on a real page. It's highlighted until setup is opened once (the first-visit nudge) and disappears when every required item is done or you dismiss it. It's a normal dashboard widget, so it can also be hidden/re-enabled from the dashboard's Customize modal.
- The floating coach card, showing the current stop's items ticking live.
- The wizard's finish step, in full interactive form.
Site-type presets
Suggestions come from ~26 built-in website-type presets (real estate, law firm, restaurant, dentist, plumber, HVAC, church, nonprofit, online store, photographer, …). Each preset carries suggested pages, add-ons, and content types. The default preset is inferred from the active theme's niche; the user can switch it on the wizard's Pages step (persisted in the setup.preset setting).
Themes can extend the suggestions: an optional suggested_features list in theme.json union-merges with the niche preset's add-ons (the theme's required_features are shown as locked-on). Developers: the tour registry is App\Support\Setup\SetupTour (stops, state in the setup.tour_active / setup.tour_step settings) and the floating coach is App\Livewire\SetupCoach; presets live in App\Support\Setup\SitePresets; the checklist engine is App\Support\Setup\SetupChecklist; pages are created through App\Support\Setup\SetupPageCreator (which bakes in the late-bound page-title role band). Pages can mark themselves as a tour target with a data-setup-target="<stop-key>" attribute — the coach pulses that element on arrival.
Relationship to the installer
The web installer (install.php) still owns the one-time infrastructure choices: database, admin account, site URL, starter theme, and optional demo content. The tour picks up where it ends — everything the installer didn't ask about (logo, colors, variant, header/footer, navigation, business/SEO settings, add-ons) — and can be relaunched from the sidebar at any time.