---
title: Getting Started
description: "AP One-Place Studies gives a one-place study - the history of a parish, village, street or house told through the records of the people who lived there - a home on your own WordPress site: a searchable occurrence index, place…"
url: "https://www.ancestorpress.com/docs/ops-getting-started-guide/"
updated: "2026-09-11"
category: "AncestorPress One-Place Studies"
---

# Getting Started

AP One-Place Studies gives a one-place study - the history of a parish, village, street or house told through the records of the people who lived there - a home on your own WordPress site: a searchable occurrence index, place and household pages, a surname index, CSV import and full export. Your data lives in your own database and can always be exported in full.

## First run

1. Install and activate from **Plugins → Add New**. Requires WordPress 6.2 or later and PHP 8.0 or later.
2. Open **AP One-Place Studies** in the admin menu. The first screen is **Set up your study**: give the study a name, enter the studied place exactly as you want it shown, choose its type (parish, village, hamlet, town, township, townland, island or other), and optionally a timeframe, a scope statement, a description and a contact address. Set the living-person cutoff (default 100 years) and tick **Public** when you are ready for visitors.
3. Saving creates the study, its core dataset, the studied place as the root of the place hierarchy, and the manual-entries record set. A draft **study profile** page is created for you to review and publish.
4. Bring in your first records: import a spreadsheet from the **Import** screen (see "Importing CSV Files"), or enter them by hand on the **Records** screen.
5. On the **Study** screen, click the button that creates the public pages - occurrence index, records, surnames, places, households and a contact page - as drafts, then publish the ones you want.

## The screens

- **Study** - the study profile, the public switch, the privacy cutoff, page creation, and the uninstall option.
- **Records** - browse, filter, enter and edit occurrences.
- **Places** - the place hierarchy under the studied place, and resolving recorded place strings to it.
- **Surnames** - the surname index and spelling grouping.
- **Import** - CSV import with mapping templates, and undoing an import.
- **Export** - CSV, GEDCOM and the archive ZIP.

## One study per site

Every edition manages one place study per WordPress site. The plugin is built around that single study: a save on the Study screen always updates it, and there is no second study to add. For another place, use another WordPress site or a multisite subsite.

## Works with the other AncestorPress plugins

One-Place Studies shares its data core with AP Family Trees and AP One-Name Studies. Install any combination; each study keeps its own dataset, and the newest bundled core is the one that runs.