Company Branding & Packaging

No. You might need a pro.

I am not sure what you mean?

Are there instructions? Probably not…

Would it be hard to set up? Depends…

It could be as simple as modifying the default theme (adding in any other themes you want included), placing the plugins you want installed in the plugin directory, making any changes to the core files that you want made, and then zipping up the entire thing and distributing that.

On the users end they’d need to do the install and then activate the installed plugins…

Not sure if this is what you’re asking though.

yes, pretty much. I wasn’t sure if I could make the modifications, save and compress the files and have the agents be able to load them on their own. I am worried that it will try to install with the admin information we generated when building the first one rather than letting them set up their own.
Maybe I should look at it this way:
1) unzip the WordPress packet
2) add our theme and corresponding files to the correct folder
3) add our plugins to the plugins folder
4) modify the create entry page using our page as an example
5) recompress the whole thing
6) send it out with instructions on how to set it up and activate the plugins.
The only issue here is determining where the code for the entry page is located which can be done in under a few minutes. I was just hoping for a short answer like “copy everything but file a, file b and file c into a new folder, then compress”.

your admin info (like password, username, etc.) is stored in the database, and there isn’t a database distributed with WP. The “agents” of course have to have their own empty database, and the installation procedure creates the necessary tables in the database, and writes the initial password which is emailed to the person who installs it.

So that kind of stuff doesn’t travel along with the files you’re making, but the stuff you want (themes plugins and hacks to the core-code) will travel with the ZIP you create

So I think you’re good, but I’d expect to spend more than a few minutes hacking the Dashboard (if you wish) and the Write Post page.

Not sure about your custom-fields needs… I think the custom fields are written to the database, which, again, does not travel with the installation. So your “agents” might have to re-create the custom field keys you want.

Like I said. You need professional help. Or a lot of agent’s who are WP gurus.

There are a lot of plugins available to do this. I just wrote about it and made a list of some of the best.

https://www.joshbyers.com/completing-the-cms-with-wordpress/