Setup Wizard

Answer five questions about your business and ClientCove builds the portal to match: the right features switched on, the pages and menus for them, starter content, and your logo and colors. It takes about five minutes.

Overview

ClientCove can run a lot of different businesses: a design studio, a one-person consultancy, an IT provider, a law firm. Each needs a different set of features, and a portal with everything switched on is confusing for you and your clients. The Setup Wizard narrows that down.

You tell it what you deliver, how you get paid, and who will log in. It turns that into a blueprint: which features to enable, which pages and navigation menus to create, which starter content to add, and a suggested color palette. You review the blueprint, change anything you like, and apply it. Then you pick a logo and palette, and the wizard hands you a short checklist of what is left.

The wizard lives inside your portal at Settings → Setup. It is written for a brand-new site, but it is safe to run on a site that already has content: it never deletes anything and never switches off a feature you are already using.

Starting the Wizard

Right after you activate the theme, WordPress admin shows a Welcome to ClientCove! notice.

1. Click Start Setup on the notice. If you dismissed it, open Settings → Setup in your portal instead.
2. You need to be an administrator. Other roles cannot open the wizard.

Step 1: License

Enter your license key from account.clientcove.io and click Continue. A valid license is required for theme updates and for Subscribed Services such as transactional email, real-time features, and AI.

Staging sites on a local or development address skip this step.

Step 2: About Your Business

Five cards, one at a time. Every option shows what it turns on, so there are no surprises later, and you can change any of it on the next screen.

1. What kind of business is this portal for? Agency or studio, consultant or freelancer, IT services / MSP, professional services, or something else.
2. What do you deliver to clients? Pick all that apply: projects with deliverables, ongoing support and requests, managed websites, devices or locations, packaged services or products, signed agreements or contracts, large file delivery.
3. How do you get paid? Invoices, retainers or recurring billing, estimates approved before work starts, clients buying online with a card, or not through the portal.
4. Who will log in? Your team only, clients viewing their work, clients submitting requests, sales reps or partners, or the public buying without an account.
5. Tell us about your business in a sentence or two, plus your team size. This sentence is what the AI uses to write the blueprint in your words.

Your answers are saved as you go, so a refresh loses nothing. Click Build my blueprint when you are done.

Step 3: Your Blueprint

One scrollable page showing everything the wizard proposes. Nothing is written to your site until you click Apply blueprint.

• Modules — the features to turn on, each with a one-line reason. Features that are off are collapsed below. Flip any switch. File Transfers, Messages, and AI Features are always on: every kind of business uses them. A feature you already use on an existing site is locked on.
• Pages — the pages that will be created for the modules that are on.
• Navigation — the Administrator, Client, and Sales Rep menus, and what goes in each. The Administrator menu is Dashboard plus five hubs — Work, Clients, Financial, Files & forms and Automate — with only the pages for the features you turn on. See The Hub Menu. A menu you do not need is not created, and the screen says why.
• Starter content — sample records so the portal is not empty on day one: your own business as an internal client, a sample ticket, a getting-started intake form, two help articles, and a project template, contract, or resource where those modules are on.
• Suggested palette — a starting color scheme. You choose the final one on the next step.

When AI is available the blueprint is written for your business and tagged written by AI · edit anything. When it is not, the wizard uses its built-in rules and tags the blueprint recommended defaults. Either way the result is complete and you can finish setup offline.

Buttons at the bottom:

• ↻ Regenerate rebuilds the blueprint from your answers. If you have made edits, it asks first, because they will be replaced.
• ← Change answers goes back to the five questions.
• Apply blueprint → writes everything: features, pages, menus, starter content, the palette, and sensible defaults for login, email, and storage. It takes about ten seconds and reports each step. If a step fails, fix the cause and click Re-apply →; only the failed steps run again.

Applying is additive and safe to repeat. Pages that already exist are reused, menus that already have items are left alone, and a setting you have already saved is never overwritten.

Step 4: Look & Feel

One logo, one palette, one accent. Two live previews, one of the portal and one of the login page, update as you go.

• Logo — click Upload a logo. You can also add a separate dark-mode logo. Skipping is fine: your site name stands in as a wordmark and "Add your logo" joins your checklist.
• Palette — click a swatch. Each named palette sets every portal color at once. The one the blueprint suggested is pre-selected.
• Accent and color mode — the accent defaults to the palette's; the color mode can be light, dark, or both.
• Login page — a welcome line for the login panel, and a background: Palette color or Upload photo.

Click Save & continue →. The wizard regenerates your portal stylesheet once.

Step 5: Your Portal Is Ready

The last screen shows:

• A tally of what was built: modules on, pages, menus, starter items, and the palette now live on the site.
• How your portal works — one card per feature you turned on, two or three sentences written for your business, with a link to open it. When the Knowledge Base is on, the same guidance is published as a help article, "Getting started with your portal", for your team.
• Adding more later — everything that is off is one switch away in Settings → Core Features.
• Finish setting up — the checklist, described below.

Click Go to my portal → to finish. Your home page is now a dashboard for your role: a welcome card, a Today card with what to do first, and, for administrators, counts of clients, projects, and open tickets. Every card on it is a starting point you can rearrange or replace in Dashboards.

Your clients' home page starts with a welcome card and a Waiting on you list — the To-Do Center — showing everything they need to do: invoices to pay, contracts to sign, tickets to reply to, stages to approve. Below it are quick links and, when Projects is on, their projects.

The Finish Setting Up Checklist

The wizard sets up what it can and lists what only you can do. The checklist follows you to your dashboard as a Finish setting up · N of M done card until it is complete, and you can dismiss the card at any time.

Item	Why it is there
Connect your email sender	Recommended first. Add your own domain so invoices and ticket replies come from you.
Connect Stripe	Only when Invoices or online selling is on. Lets clients pay invoices and buy online.
Invite your team	Only when you said your team is more than just you.
Add your first real client	Only when clients will log in. The getting-started intake form is ready to send them.
Polish the login page	Photo or video background, custom links, layout: the Login Page Designer.
Add your logo	Only when you skipped the logo.
Cloud storage	Optional. Files live on your server until you move them to Spaces, S3, or GCS.

Items the wizard completed itself, such as branding and login, start out done. Most items tick themselves off when the wizard detects the work is done, for example once a Stripe key is saved. Any item can also be marked done by hand.

Running It Again

Open Settings → Setup at any time. The wizard starts from your saved answers and the current state of the site. Applying again is safe: it adds what is missing and leaves everything else as it is.

What the Wizard Does Not Do

• It never deletes pages, menus, content, or settings, and it never turns off a feature that is on today.
• It does not overwrite a setting you have already saved. Login, email, and storage defaults are written only where nothing has been configured yet.
• It does not need AI to finish. Without an AI connection you get the built-in recommendations instead, and the screen says so.
• It does not replace the full design tools. Fine-tuning colors, the login page, and your dashboards happens in Settings → Design, the Login Page Designer, and Dashboards.
• It does not keep changing menus you have edited. When you turn on a feature later in Settings → Core Features, its page is added to the right hub of a wizard-built menu only if nobody has edited that menu in Settings → Menus since. Otherwise, add it yourself under Menus.

Related Pages

• Quick Start Guide — installing and activating the theme
• Account Setup & Login — your profile and login
• Navigating the Dashboard — finding your way around
• The Hub Menu — the five hubs, and switching a portal set up before them
• The Client To-Do Center — the list your clients see first
• Plans & Rate Cards — if estimates or retainers are part of how you get paid