If you’ve seen my writing before, you likely already know how much I love the iOS and MacOS platforms. They are my preferred way...
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
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!
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Thanks for this Kevin – its really useful! I have a couple of questions about plugins… I am trying to limit the plugins on my site and so want to avoid ones that are duplicating jobs, and theoreticaly get the multipurpose ones. I have Updraft already and Akismet but I have just looked at Jetpack and it apparantly does all these things, as well as analytics etc – so should I switch to that?
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Wow I have REALLY REALLY done a ton of reading (I’m a Fitness Expert Not a web or tech geek) despite all my reading research yada yada-your list? Makes me WISH-I could hand it to you-your site is visually relaxing and not like most others Bombarding me with Junk and all others?
Give me the spinning ball of hell on my old macair—Great Job-I need your help-Molly (FYI-I have procrastinated SOOOO long re beginning a website for work and blogging-I did the lazy thing and had ‘Strikingly’ suck my info from linked in-and have yet to make it ‘nice’ and edit-Editing?? NOT my strong suit-