When you first start thinking about your shiny new WordPress website, the number one thing on your mind is “What’s my site gonna look like?”. Any credible advice you read on the web about starting a new blog, all the great marketers will tell you not to worry about what your site looks like, just get a basic WordPress site and theme in place so you’ll have a place to create your content. For all intents and purposes they are correct because the greatest theme design in the world won’t bring you any readers or customers.

It’s important to understand this otherwise sound advice was given primarily during a time before Rainmaker Digital ever created StudioPress Themes! Today we have access to a huge repository of beautifully designed, very fast, securely coded themes which are running on one of the best theme frameworks ever written. The Genesis framework is the most versatile theme framework I’ve ever used. Child themes running on the Genesis framework can be customized in more ways than any other theme currently on the market, no to mention how awesome the default designs are!

I highly recommend StudioPress Themes because of their unique ability to assist you in getting your site up and running with an incredibly looking, highly versatile blog or website in far less time than nearly all of it’s competitors. In short, by using StudioPress as our theme provider, we can follow the sound advice (start writing your content ASAP), every seasoned internet marketer will give you, plus you can get a huge jump on your competition by starting out with a very beautiful, highly versatile design right from the beginning without having to wait until you can afford to have one custom coded for you by a professional designer.

StudioPress gives you the leg up against your competition you really need to get started on the right foot in your internet business. You will never regret your decision to go with StudioPress themes right from the beginning. Not to mention, if you ever need any help, just get in touch with me and I’ll be glad to give you a hand selecting an appropriate theme and getting it setup and going for you.

When you’re considering what type of website you’ll need for your business, you naturally start wondering how the website will be built, how it’ll be updated, will you be able to update it, or will you have to pay someone to do the updates for you, etc. I highly recommend using WordPress.org as your website builder or CMS/blogging software. It seems kinda’ redundant to even mention this these days because WordPress is so widely recognized as a standard in the WebSphere. However, I know from personal experience there are many different types of blogging and website building software to choose from, and I’d really hate to see you choose a platform that is a) not stable or secure, or b) one that isn’t easy to use or configure, and c) one that may not be enjoyable for you to use long-term. Regardless of whether you’re strictly blogging, or whether you’re building and maintaining a corporate web presence, you’ll be spending a considerable amount of time with the website builder (CMS) platform of your choice; so it better be a great experience, or you’ll be hating life in no time, I promise you that!

Security & Usability

My number one concern when deciding on any software that I’ll use in my internet business would have to be its security. While WordPress is not without its flaws, it is by far the most widely used, updated, and tested platform available today. Due to it’s extremely broad range of usage in today’s website market, it remains one of the most thoroughly tested and secure platforms available. This also contributes to its ease of use. Many times when WordPress sites have security issues, or they experience getting hacked, it’s due to the fact they either weren’t maintained or updated properly, or the plugins used allowed some type of vulnerability in their coding. The problem is very rarely related to the WordPress core software.

When I first started working with websites back in ’04, I hand-coded every single line of HTML in Notepad. E-v-e-r-y single line of HTML and CSS were written by hand. Actually my first site didn’t even use CSS. It was all HTML 4.0 and tables! WOW! What a difference a few years in the internet world makes! I wouldn’t even consider building a website these days without using WordPress!

Conclusion

Use WordPress for all of your website projects, and here’s why:

1. It’s very easy to learn
2. It’s extremely customizable
3. Its support staff and community are the best of breed
4. Its one of the most secure CMS and blogging platforms available today
5. As of this writing, there are 48,293 plugins available to customize WordPress to your hearts content
6. It’s hands down, without question, the most secure, most scalable, easily customized, easiest to use CMS software available today, and you get all this for free!

WordPress will not let you down, and there’s not a (web, internet based) project in this world that it can’t tackle, head-on, and win at every single time…bar none!

One of the most confusing topics for anyone just getting started online is the world of web hosting. Quite frankly, I’ve been working on websites, building websites, and running SEO campaigns since ’04, and web hosting can still be frustrating to deal with at times.

All things considered, probably the worst part about web hosting is selecting the perfect hosting provider, the first time! Because this seems to be an impossible task, I’ve created a list of some of the best hosting providers I’ve used in the past (and the ones I’m using now). Let me just reiterate, very quickly, there are a LOT of web hosts out there, and I’ve used several of them over the last 12 years. The web hosts that I’m recommending to you on this list are not the cheapest, nor are they the most expensive, they are simply the best hosts in their respective categories out of all the ones I’ve used over the years.

Shared Hosting

Over the years, I’ve used multiple different shared hosting providers for several different affiliate sites, and blogs alike. Some of these include names such as GoDaddy, Media Temple, LiquidWeb, WestHost, and others. Some are horrible, some are horrible at some things while being good at others, and some actually seem to get it…well one of them does!

The only ***shared hosting provider*** I’ve ever used that really seemed to “get it”, was WestHost Hosting. One of their most outstanding qualities I can remember was their servers have great page loading speed for a shared host. Of course WordPress is easy to install, and their whole back-end runs very smoothly. Great up-time as well!

I loved their customer support! I can remember asking billing questions and hosting questions on more than one occasion, and they were always very courteous and helpful.

I distinctly remember one time I totally screwed up something, and they never once acted harshly with me, they simply helped me fix the problem(s) I created!

– Matt Vaden

Specialized WordPress Hosting

In my personal opinion, StudioPress is one of the only Real Providers of Managed WordPress hosting. StudioPress really does provide the best of breed in respect to super fast, incredibly reliable WordPress hosting.

Let me introduce you to the world’s most Premier WordPress Hosting environment, StudioPress Sites. StudioPress Sites is a Managed WordPress hosting environment, but it’s Not Just Another WordPress Site!

You are provided with:

1. Advanced SEO Functionality
2. Rock-solid Security Scanning
3. Totally Fantastic Customer Support
4. World-class, WordPress Tuned Hosting
5. Automatic Plugin & Theme Updates
6. No Up-charges for Bandwidth, Storage, CPUs, and RAM
7. Twenty (20) of the world’s most efficient, securely coded, beautiful themes on the market
8. Built-in access to some of WordPress’ most popular and useful premium plugins currently on the market (including but not limited to: AMP, OptinMonster, AffiliateWP, and Design Palette Pro just to name a few)!

Imagine your website loading faster than any of your competitors, looking more professional than almost any other site on the web, and conforming to Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) project – which incidentally does affect your search engine rankings, just to name a few of the benefits. I currently host several of my WordPress sites with StudioPress Sites and I highly recommend them to all my customers. StudioPress has quickly become one of the most trusted names in the world of WordPress websites, all due to real, proven, statistics, not over-inflated sales hype! Guys, StudioPress is not the cheapest, or the oldest managed WordPress hosting provider on the market, but they are the real deal, without a doubt! What are you really willing to risk your business for? I’ve got one word for you: don’t! Just host with the best!