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Getting started

First steps after install

Log in, brand your site, add your first videos and run through the go-live checklist.

Your site is installed — now let’s make it yours. This guide walks the first things to do in the admin panel, from setting your site name to publishing your first videos and a final pre-launch checklist.

Everything here lives under /admin, and none of it requires touching code.

Log in to the admin panel

Sign in at /admin with the administrator account you created during installation. If you set a custom admin path for security, use that instead. To harden the login — a custom admin URL, two-factor authentication and rate limiting — see Security.

Set your site identity

Open /admin/settings and set the essentials under General:

Site name
Appears in the header, page titles and emails.
Site description
Default meta description and tagline for your home page.
Timezone
Controls timestamps across the site. Default: UTC.
Site URL
Auto-detected at install — confirm it matches your real domain and uses https.

For the full list of options, see the Settings reference.

Brand your site

Head to Appearance to upload a logo and favicon, set a background image, and tune your colours — including a built-in dark mode. You can switch or customise the active theme from here too. See Appearance and Themes.

Add your first videos

There are several ways to fill your site:

  • Add videos manually — upload or link a file and set its title, thumbnail and taxonomy. See Videos.
  • Bulk import — load a CSV or JSON with column mapping and duplicate detection. See Import.
  • The catalogue — one-click licensed videos from the 400k+ library (needs a connected account). See Catalogue.

You can also pull in external RSS/MRSS feeds — see Feed import.

Turn on the essentials

A handful of toggles decide how your community works. Sensible defaults are already in place; review these before launch:

  1. Registration. Member accounts are off by default. Turn registration on if you want favorites, watch history and profiles. See Users & roles.
  2. Comments & anti-spam. Comments are on with moderation enabled. A honeypot, time-gate, rate limits, and duplicate, link and length filters all ship ready to use. See Comments and Moderation.
  3. Captcha. Off by default. Add reCAPTCHA (v2 or v3) or Cloudflare Turnstile keys to protect your registration and comment forms. See Security.
  4. Age verification. Enable the bundled Age Gate plugin for a full-screen 18+ verification overlay (with an optional RTA meta tag), then review the seeded legal pages (2257, privacy, terms) so visitors see the right notices. See Moderation and Pages & menus.

Go-live checklist

Before you announce your site, run through this:

  • Site name, description, timezone and the correct https site URL are set.
  • Logo and favicon uploaded; colours and theme chosen.
  • Real videos added or imported, with categories and tags.
  • Comments, anti-spam and (optionally) captcha configured.
  • Footer and legal pages reviewed — the installer seeds defaults you should edit.
  • SEO basics checked — titles, sitemaps and metadata. See SEO.
  • A backup taken. See Backups.
  • Optional: a TubePress account connected for the catalogue, AI and support.
Preview as a visitor. Open your home page in a private window to see exactly what a logged-out user sees before you go public.

Next steps

AppearanceLogo, colours, menus and dark mode. ImportBring videos in from CSV or JSON. SEOSitemaps, metadata and structured data.

Still stuck?

Open a ticket from your dashboard and our team will help you out.

Try the live demo → Download TubePress →