Camp FI 2018: My Talk Notes

Hello Everybody! I gave a talk at Camp FI this year on creating your next website and what to do next. It was a lot of content, so I’m putting my software recommendations all here from the talk, with a little expansion here and there! You’ll also have my slides and a video going through the same content I went through on the demo.

Disclosure: Some links are affiliate links for myself and friends, but don’t effect what software I recommend. I only use the referral links if one is available. In fact many I could sign up to be an affiliate with but I never bothered…

Hosting

• Shared Hosting: Siteground
• VPS Providers: Vultr, Linode, Digital Ocean (now all prices match! Go for the 1Gb RAM Plan)
• WordPress Management for VPS: Serverpilot (Free plan should do everything you need!)
• For hosting yourself to practice, Local by Flywheel is your best option!

Themes

• Recommended Free Themes: Astra, GeneratePress
• Recommended Paid Themes: Astra Pro, GeneratePress Premium (plugins add features to the theme), Genesis Framework + any Genesis theme
• For visually tweaking the theme’s look outside the customizer using CSS: Microthemer

Domains

Recommended Registrars: Hover, Google Domains. Both don’t charge you for WHOIS privacy settings. Hover is best if it’s just going to be you, Google Domains if you want to work with others, as you can grant access to edit your domain settings to anyone with a Google Account

Email

Recommended Paid Providers: GSuite (Google), Office 365 (Microsoft), Rackspace

Recommended Free Provider: Zoho – scroll down for the free plan

Logo Design

• Fiverr, I’ve used this person several times and have been happy with the work
• 99 Designs

All The Plugins (plus other things)!

Page Builders

I recommend Beaver Builder and its add-on Beaver Themer if you want to have a clean “drag and drop” business site.

Add-ons to enhance its features I’d recommend are Power Pack, and UABB (Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder)

One Plugin to rule them all

Jetpack can do a lot for your site, just only use what you need! Turn off any features you don’t use.

Kill Comment Spam – Antispam Bee

Google Analytics – GADWP

Newsletter Providers – MailerLite, MailChimp

SEO – The SEO Framework

Transactional Email – MailGun, SendGrid

Caching – WP Rocket

Web Automation – Zapier, IFTTT, Microsoft Flow

I talked about a few more things in my talk, so if you’d like the slides, you can download them here!

Below is my demo creating a WordPress site using a Digital Ocean VPS, and ServerPilot to manage the WordPress site:

Cheers!