by Alexandru Puiu 
7 min read
Upgrade wordpress and any default plugins or themes that have updates
If you already have a theme you want to use, you can probably skip to the end of this section.
There are a bunch of great marketplaces. Wordpress’ builtin one and ThemeForest.net are some of the best. Click on Appearance -> Themes
by Alexandru Puiu 4 min read I find wordpress to be sufficient for my needs for a blog, so it’s my go-to for a really simple site or blog. If custom logic is needed, it’s a no-go, and it’s all the way custom based on what’s needed. “Right tech for the job.”
Part 1: Hosting / installation
Part 2: Plugins, upgrading PHP, HTTP security headers
Part 3: Caching, WAF and Optimizations
Part 4: Monitoring and performance testing
Azure, AWS and GCP have great free offerings for getting started, and free-tier that’s probably sufficient for small blogs. Wordpress.com could be a good option as well. I prefer Digital Ocean in this case, because I have full control over the VM, it’s really cheap ($6/month), it’s a one-click deploy droplet, and really fast. Digital Ocean also monitors security bulletins and sends me relevant info on vulnerabilities, so I can patch anything that’s needed, and they handle backups seamlessly.
