If you followed the recommended hosting provider (HostGator), your plan came with WordPress pre-installed.

Before starting from scratch, we'll remove that automatic installation so you can experience a clean install process.

To remove the existing installation:

1. Access your HostGator Dashboard (Account Manager);
2. Instead of clicking Edit Site to enter WordPress, click the Settings button under your domain name;
3. You'll be taken to a new screen with technical details about your WordPress installation;
4. Click the Settings tab in the horizontal menu;
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the section called Remove WordPress entirely;
6. Follow the on-screen instructions to delete the current installation.

If you didn't use HostGator or your hosting provider doesn't include automatic removal through their dashboard, you can delete your WordPress installation using cPanel.

Contact their support team to learn how to access cPanel.

Here's how:

1. Log into your hosting account and access cPanel;
2. Scroll down to Software and open WordPress Manager by Softaculous (the name may vary slightly depending on your version);
3. On the next screen, you'll see your current WordPress installations listed;
4. Find the domain you want to reset and check the checkbox next to it;
5. At the bottom or top of the list, find the dropdown that says With Selected: and choose Remove Completely;
6. Confirm the removal and wait a few moments for the process to finish.

This will delete all WordPress files, databases, and data associated with that installation.

Once the previous installation has been removed, it's time to install WordPress from scratch.

If you're using HostGator:

1. Go back to the Hosting section in the left sidebar;
2. Scroll down to Quick Links, then click on cPanel;
3. Inside cPanel, scroll to Software and select WordPress Manager by Softaculous.

The rest of the process follows the exact same steps we covered in the lesson: Installing WordPress via cPanel. (We won't repeat it here, but feel free to refer back to that chapter if you need a refresher.)

After WordPress is installed, it's time to install the theme we'll use in this project: Astra.

We've already covered how to search for and install Astra in a previous lesson.

Once Astra is installed, we'll import one of its free Starter Templates to get a ready-made layout.
We covered this process in detail earlier.

After the theme and template are set up, it's time to adjust a few key settings to match your project:

• Go to Settings → General;
• Set the Site Title and Tagline;
• Update the Site Language and Timezone.

These steps were also covered previously, so in this chapter, we'll simply repeat the process as part of the complete setup.