Two weeks ago I finished working for Southern Cross University as their Website Officer. It was a good job, working with a great little team. But some personal circumstances meant I had to leave.

Making the switch from full-time work to freelancing

There was no planned migration from full-time to freelance. I just did it.

The key thing for me is that I have an established skill base:

• Expert HTML and CSS, novice at a few other front-end languages
• User Interface design
• User Experience design
• Search Engine Optimisation
• WordPress
• Analytics
• Plus other random skills related to the web

On top of this, for the last few years I’ve had a web design business on the side – Alpha Bear Interactive – which had been good pocket money, working on it a few hours a week. I have a few projects in the works already, and am able to source new clients through this business.

The money situation

While I do have some savings to keep me going, and some projects in process that will pay well soon, I’m definitely not in a secure financial position. I have a car loan that needs regular payments. I’m committed to a trip to Thailand early in 2017 for a friend’s wedding.

I’m not stressed about money. But I know these early days are critical. That’s what is motivating me, do the hard yards now, it will pay off soon.

Upwork

It feels like I’m starting from nothing all over again. I have 10+ years experience in web design and development related work, yet it took me 3 days of constant effort to land even the simplest of tasks.

This has been the biggest challenge for me so far. My skills, experience and portfolio on my Upwork profile show I’m an expert, but I’ve barely landed a job, let alone had anyone visit my profile. Landing the first job on these kinds of sites is difficult. But I’m optimistic, knowing that it only takes a handful of reviews, even on tiny jobs, to get the work flowing.

Goals and future plans

My biggest goal is to never return to office work. Sitting 9-5 doing unfulfilling work was literally killing me.

The freedom that freelancing brings is already making me happier than I’ve been in years. I’m not working in some glamorous location (as you can see in the photo of my desk above). But I do have enough to get by, and the future is bright.

My secondary goal (obviously essential to my first goal) is cash flow. Get enough steady work coming in so that I’m back to the level I was at while working full time (able to save, put money into superannuation and holidays).

Once the cash flow is sorted, I’m going to start experimenting with different ideas – projects that I’m passionate about, that can also make me money. Have been playing with some ideas around my photography, and my Japan travel blog.

Thinking of becoming a digital nomad, or you are one?

If you’re thinking of making the switch to freelance, or have already been doing it, and somehow stumble on this article, I’d love to hear about your experience.

Here I’ll post about any add-ons or modifications I do to the bike. First thing to sort out was storage bags…

ViaTerra Velox Saddlebags

I like to ride. I like to take photos. I don’t like to wear a backpack filled with heavy photo gear while riding.

So after quite a lot of research, I bought the ViaTerra Velox Saddlebags. Have been using these bags daily for a few weeks now.

You can fit either a single bag or both bags. ViaTerra gear’s video for mounting and un-mounting the Velox Saddlebags was super helpful, but doesn’t show how to mount just a single bag.

The left bag can be mounted by itself. It has a strap which usually passes across the top of the seat and connects to the right bag. Without the right bag, just loop the strap around the rear grab bar on the right side of the bike.

Freedom.

Riding without a backpack just adds to the feeling of freedom while riding a motorbike.

The two bags together hold a significant amount of stuff. More stuff than a normal backpack.

At first I was a bit hesitant about putting $5000 worth of camera gear in these bags. But these bags are super sturdy. They fix securely to the bike. The riders legs divert air away from the bags, so there is very little dragging the bags away from their mounts.

Colours match the scheme of the bike, and include reflective piping for extra visibility.

Coming back from this ride, I managed to fit the following in the bags:

• Canon EOS 6D
• 16-35mm lens
• 70-200mm lens
• Spare camera batteries
• Large lens filter pouch, other random camera cleaning bits and pieces
• Waterproof lining for bike pants
• Water bottle
• 6 pack of beer
• 1kg bag of Potato Gems
• Cordon Bleu chicken breast
• Pair of runners
• Phone and wallet
• 2 waterproof covers for the saddlebags

DiscoverSCU

DiscoverSCU is a website featuring news about Southern Cross University, authored by the media team within Communications and Publications. News is released monthly, and an email newsletter distributed to subscribers, staff and students.

The website runs on WordPress, and the email content is dynamically populated using Campaign Monitor’s One-Click Content, making each monthly issue quite simple to publish.

Future Students

Southern Cross University’s Future Students website is the destination for anyone considering study at SCU. The site runs on a custom CMS and the design is unique to the rest of the site, as it needs to be consistent with the University’s advertising material.

SCU+20

SCU+20 is a short collaborative project aimed at formulating the University’s next strategic plan.

Last year I finished up a new PC build and just got around to taking photos. Here is my latest custom PC build in all its glowing red glory.

Contents of this post:

• Keyboard: Ducky Shine 3 TKL (Ten Key-less) Mechanical Keyboard Red LED Cherry Brown Switches
• Mouse: Thermaltake Level 10 M Diamond Black
• Wacom Intuos Pen (Small)
• Case: Corsair CC760T
• Power supply: Corsair GS700 + sticker trim kit
• Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97X-SOC Force
• Video card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X 4G Windforce
• Processor: Intel i7-4770K
• Processor cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H110
• Memory: G.Skill Trident-X F3-2400C10D-16GTX (8Gx2)
• Boot drive: Samsung 850 PRO 256GB SSD
• Storage drive: Samsung 840 EVO 512GB SSD
• Benchmark scores and other tests
• UPDATE: tweaking part placement
• Full parts list

Previously I was on a MacBook Pro, but that was 5 years old and very slow. Originally I started this project to build a Hackintosh, but found it unstable and a lot of the features that came with my high end gear had no Mac OS interface. So instead I made the switch to Windows 8.1.

Overall I’ve gone for a red theme. This is my first PC with SSD boot and storage drives. The speed is phenomenal, the system boots in just a few seconds, and opening most programs is almost instant.

Keyboard: Ducky Shine 3 TKL (Ten Key-less) Mechanical Keyboard Red LED Cherry Brown Switches

This is my first mechanical keyboard, and I love it. It’s great for gaming, very responsive and tactile. The brown switches aren’t loud. This keyboard has a huge range of settings for the LED lights, I generally leave them all on.

Mouse: Thermaltake Level 10 M Diamond Black

A nice gaming mouse that is very customisable. Software comes with the mouse so you can customise buttons, and with a click of a button on the side you can easily switch between profiles.

Wacom Intuos Pen (Small)

In front of the mouse is a pen tablet, used for photo processing and digital design. I’m a web designer/developer by trade, a friend and I are founders of Alpha Bear Interactive.

Case: Corsair CC760T

This case was expensive, but for building a custom PC it was an excellent choice. It’s a full tower, very easy to work with and has a huge range of features. The window panel on the side shows off the interior setup nicely.

The case came with 2 white LED fans in front, which I moved to the top and back of the computer (more on this below). Another non-LED fan was included at the back of the case as an exhaust, I also moved this. In total, including fans on the power supply, graphics card and water cooling radiator, this build has 10 fans in it… and it’s not loud at all!

Power supply: Corsair GS700 + sticker trim kit

The 700W power supply is more than enough for me at the moment. This is Corsair’s Gaming Series of power supply, and a switch at the back allows you to cycle between different coloured LED fans (red, blue, white or off). The trim on the power supply was originally blue, Corsair sells a red trim kit which isn’t available in Australia, but a mate of mine from Chicago sent me the kit (thanks Dan!).

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97X-SOC Force

This motherboard is a beast. It has so many features and accommodates all the fans I have. The on-board controls are great for instant overclocking.

As this is my first build in a long time, I didn’t have much experience in cable organisation, but I think I did OK at keeping the cables tidy.

Video card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X 4G Windforce

This a good mid-range graphics card, enough for me to run modern games (Far Cry 4, Battlefield 4) on the highest settings. Only advice if you want this card is to measure the free space, it’s quite long and also put my PCI Express (×1) slot out of action as it took up so much room.

Processor: Intel i7-4770K

This is the overclocking model and has already been superseded by the i7-4790K – but I won’t need to upgrade this for a fair while yet. I haven’t gone crazy with overclocking, I generally run the system at 4.3GHz, but will push it a little when I run some more benchmarks.

Processor cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H110

The CPU water cooling system is quiet and very effective. In the photo below you can see the Corsair logo on a round object – that is in direct contact with the CPU. The two pipes that come out feed water around this object to cool the processor. The pipes connect to a 280mm radiator at the top of the case. Above the radiator I have 2 fans, below is one white LED fan.

Memory: G.Skill Trident-X F3-2400C10D-16GTX (8Gx2)

This Trident-X RAM is very fast, and I run it at the full 2400MHz. The heat sync on top is a cool metallic looking sharp red edge, a beast of a RAM stick!

Boot drive: Samsung 850 PRO 256GB SSD

This is used as my C drive where Windows 8.1 and all my applications are stored. Applications such as Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop open almost instantly (goodbye to the days of staring at the credits screen!). In the closeup shot below this drive is at the top.

Storage drive: Samsung 840 EVO 512GB SSD

This is used as my storage drive, where all my Adobe Lightroom photos and general working files are kept. Browsing the Lightroom library is totally lag-free, all previews instantly appear.

Benchmark scores and other tests

Below are results from NovaBench tests. Overall the score looks low, but after comparisons, here’s what I’ve found:

• RAM speed is fast, the G.Skill Trident-X really is some of the fastest RAM out there. About 5 – 10% faster than others.
• CPU test was on par, maybe a little lower than average. For this initial benchmark, I didn’t overclock the CPU. Will run some more tests while overclocked and see what the results are like.
• Graphics Tests scores aren’t great, this is a mid-range card. That said, I’m happy with the gaming performance. Will run some benchmarks on the Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X 4G Windforce soon.
• Hardware test scores were more than double others, the Samsung SSDs are very fast. I was surprised that the Evo could write faster than the Pro, but that could be influenced by the amount of free space on each drive.

SSD benchmarks

CPU temperature monitoring

GPU fan speed and temperature monitoring

Benchmarks and tests to do

• Graphics card benchmarks
• Post some videos of gameplay, GTAV looks good and I’ve recorded some gameplay video.

UPDATE: tweaking part placement

Last week after watching some YouTube videos of other custom PC builds, I discovered a few new things about the Corsair CC760T case, and a few ideas of how to do things differently. Here’s what I changed:

• Moved the 280mm radiator of the Corsair Hydro Series H110 to the front of the case. Before doing this the 2 existing front red LED 140mm  fans were moved inside the case – otherwise the cooling pipes won’t reach to the CPU.
• Removed the two top 140mm fans (there were 6 fans in there, a bit of overkill. There’s now 4 – and that’s not counting the 3 on the GPU and 1 on the PSU).
• Flipped the power supply around, so it draws air through the bottom of the case. There is a removable filter and some air holes in the case under the PSU area. It now draws cool air up from outside of the case. Just a shame can no longer see the LED fan on the PSU…
• Removed the 2.5″ hard-drive rack and moved the two SDDs to racks located on the right side of the case. They are almost hidden, but you can probably spot the Samsung logos if you view the high res photo:

Full parts list

My current kayak is a Barracuda Beachcomber Ultralight. It’s a great kayak for both ocean and rivers. Compared to my old Mantra Palani kayak, the Beachcomber is: 86cm longer; 17cm thinner; 15kg lighter!

Arriving at the south-most end of Wooli Rd, I parked the car and scoped out the scene. My camp spot can easily be seen from the mainland. In the photo above the camp spot is on the grass above the sandy river side area.

The photo above is taken from the breakwall near Wooli Beach. Over the other side is Jones Beach.

When kayaking anywhere near a point where a river meets the ocean, I always check out the tide and how the water is flowing. Arriving here late in the afternoon, there was a strong outgoing tide. This kind of tide could take a kayak out to sea very easily, as it’d be almost impossible to paddle against the tide.

When the tide is calmer, or if you have a boat, you can land at Jones Beach, which is very secluded as is only accessible by water.

After checking out the conditions I parked my car at the south boat ramp along Wooli Rd and pushed off into the Wooli Wooli River. From the boat ramp to the camp spot is only a few hundred metres – but the point of today’s trip wasn’t a long kayaking session, it was to test out my kayak camping setup.

At around 5PM I landed at the camp spot. It was low tide and the tide was still going out.

I sat for a few minutes and enjoyed a beer while looking out across the river. A few guys were playing drunken river football force-em-backs, and one nearly got swept out with the tide (he had a beer in one hand).

Full list of gear for an overnight kayak camp

Then I laid out absolutely everything (minus the stubbie I drank earlier) that I packed in the kayak. You can click the photo above to view the full size image. Here’s a full list of the gear:

• Crazy Creek Hex 2.0 Powerlounger
• BlackWolf Standard Full self-inflating sleeping mat
• BlackWolf Deluxe self-inflating pillow
• Compact 5°C sleeping bag
• Single swag/tent
• 3x3m hiking refuge shelter
• Hiking stove
• Companion propane cartridge
• Companion Pro Nano Duo Hiking Cookset
• Cutlery and utensils
• Hiking fold-able bucket
• Detergent, scourer, tea towel
• Food and drink:
  • 1 x can of soup, 1 x can of spaghetti
  • 2 bread rolls
  • Banana and apple
  • Chocolate and snacks
  • Greek salad
  • Back Country Cuisine instant Spaghetti Bolognaise
  • 1 hip flask (with VSOP Cognac)
  • 2 small bottles of soda water
  • 1 lime
  • 4 x 1l bottles of water
  • Coffee sachets and sugar
• Rope
• Emergency rain jacket
• Head torch and two other torches
• Gerber machete
• Titanium diving knife
• Trowel
• First aid kit
• Citronella candles, 2 packets of matches, emergency flint
• Bushmans insect repellent spray, insect repellent roll on
• CB radio: waterproof and float-able
• Toilet paper, paper towels
• DSLR camera, waterproof camera bag (plus spare batteries and SD card)
• Magazine and a book
• 6 x sand tent pegs
• Towel
• 1 change of clothes
• Kayak hand water pump
• Kayak paddle float
• Life vest

Some great gear

I recently got some of this gear new, so here are some quick thoughts:

Crazy Creek Hex 2.0 Powerlounger: This is the blue chair in the photo above, it is very compact and rolls up to about the same size as the hiking shelter. It’s quite comfortable, and can be laid fully flat and placed under the mattress at night for added comfort.

BlackWolf Standard Full self-inflating sleeping mat: The best self-inflating mat I’ve had. I paid $150 for it at Coffs Outdoor World. It passed the “I can’t feel the ground when laying down” test.

Companion Pro Nano Duo Hiking Cookset: this set (also pictured below, grey with green handles) is very lightweight and contains 2 pots and 2 bowls. Inside the set is a fold-able hiking bucket, detergent, scourer and the hiking stove itself.

Back Country Cuisine Spaghetti Bolognaise: MRE style, this takes up very little room and is very light. Just add boiling water, stir and sit for 10 minutes, then eat straight from the packet. I had this with a bread roll and greek salad. Next time though I’ll bring some salt and pepper.

Lessons learned: what I’ll do different next time

• The camp pillow was terrible, so next time instead I’ll bring a normal pillow and stuff it into a compression bag.
• More of the instant meals (or MRE) and less larger canned food.
• I actually left my small cooler bag with a couple of 200ml milks at home, so next time I’ll bring this and have a decent coffee and cereal for breakfast.
• Replace the normal towel with a microfiber one.
• The tent takes up quite a bit of room, so I’ll get a more compact bivy or 1 person hiking tent.

As the tide was reaching its lowest point in the late afternoon the soldier crabs came out to play.

To the right of the yellow warning sign in the photo below is the river mouth. The warning sign says that this channel is dangerous and life vests are compulsory.

The hiking shelter has guy ropes built into it, so I just found a couple of tree branches and propped it all up, setting my tent up underneath it. I secured the kayak to a tree with a bike lock – chances are low that anyone would come out and steal it. Getting stuck without a paddle is one thing, but without a kayak would be a whole different story…

Some quiet solitude at sunset… After dinner I had a few cognacs and read, then got to bed for an early night.

I was all packed and pushed off again by about 7:30AM (after a milk-less coffee and canned spaghetti for breakfast).

All my rubbish was kept to one plastic bag, and besides the footprints in the sand – you wouldn’t know I was there!

Map of the camp spot on the Wooli Wooli River. The blue boat icon is the boat ramp and the yellow house icon is the camp spot.

If you like fishing, be sure to read the signs at the boat ramp. This entire area is basically a national park and there are restrictions on where you can fish.

At the boat ramp there is also a sign with information about the local emergency radio frequencies and phone numbers.

Verdict: kayak camping at Wooli NSW

This was a great first camp. I’ll keep exploring the area and try for some longer distance paddles next time.

This article reviews two Australian hosting companies – two companies that I trust and actually use as a web designer and developer. Yes, I’ll receive a tiny commission if you decide to use one of these companies, but this doesn’t increase the cost of hosting to you (and hey, at least I’m up front about it!).

[box] Since 2010 hosting of deanwormald.com has been taken care of by Host Geek.

My high traffic travel site japantravelmate.com is happily hosted with Crucial.[/box]

For well over decade I’ve used many hosting companies, from the $2-a-month hosts to those costing several thousand dollars a month. The two businesses above are my go-to hosts for holding my client websites. So let’s look at these two hosts in more detail…

Host Geek

Cheap hosting for personal and small business use

Host Geek is an Australian business offering lots of different hosting packages. I use it to host this website you’re on right now. I also refer many of my web design clients to Host Geek. Here’s why they are a great option if you’re looking for cheap hosting:

• Hosting starts from just $5.50 a month, and includes:
  • 400MB of storage: plenty for a small blog or a small business website (upgrading is easy if you need more space).
  • cPanel with Installatron: simple no-code WordPress installation.
  • 100 email accounts: plenty of custom email addresses.
  • 10 databases: which equals 10 WordPress/MySQL database installations.
  • 10 add-on domains: you can host the websites for up to 10 different domain names on the one host.

Host Geek are based in Melbourne and their data center is located in Melbourne. The data center is where the actual physical hard drives are located which store a website. Having a data center in Australia is beneficial for local business SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), as Google and other search engines can see that you are based in Australia and most likely, your content is relevant to Australians.

Speed test results from a site hosted with Host Geek

I’ve always been very happy with the speed my site runs at with Host Geek. A speed test confirms it…

[button link=”http://deanwormald.com/visit/hostgeek/” color=”red” newwindow=”yes”] Learn more: Host Geek website hosting[/button]

Crucial

Fast hosting for high traffic & business critical sites

Crucial is an Australian hosting provider based in Sydney. I’ve been with Crucial since 2014, as the popularity of my japantravelmate.com started to grow, reaching tens of thousands of visitors a month.

Crucial’s hosting is rock solid. The servers use superfast SSD storage. Support is awesome. The best thing is that everything with Crucial is just so simple.

• Hosting is $20 a month and includes:
  • 50GB of storage: more than enough for almost any website.
  • cPanel with Softaculous: enabling code-free, easy WordPress installation
  • Unlimited data transfer: no worries about bandwidth!
  • Unlimited email accounts: go crazy with custom email addresses!
  • 20 databases: up to 20 WordPress or MySQL database installations. With Crucial’s control panel, you can install loads of different applications with a click of a button – most use a MySQL database.
  • 10 add-on domains: enabling you to store and host 10 different websites under different domain names.

Speed test results from a site hosted with Crucial

Below is a speed test performed on a page hosted by Crucial.

Important notes:

• This page has more than double the requests than deanwormald.com
• The page is more than 3 times larger than the page on deanwormald.com
• Some of the requests are on slow external servers that aren’t mine (i.e. for plugins)
• There are no cache optimisation plugins enabled (e.g. W3 Total Cache)
• … even with all this, it loads as fast as a page that is 3 times smaller!

[button link=”http://deanwormald.com/visit/crucial/” color=”red” newwindow=”yes”] Learn more: Crucial website hosting[/button]

Take a look at all their website hosting plans.

In this detailed review I’ll share my experience with Host Geek using their shared website hosting (what they call business website hosting, but very suitable to personal sites like mine), as well as giving you an inside look at the hosting environment and control panel, something not many reviews do. Also at the end of the post, there’s a special Host Geek discount coupon to get a really good deal on your hosting.

I’m a digital industry professional with over 10+ years experience, and in my job I deal with large scale hosting providers. So I know my stuff, I’ve shopped around and now am taking the time to tell you about Host Geek and why they’re so good. A few months ago I posted that Host Geek are the best WordPress hosts in Australia, now here’s the review to back it up.

My hosting setup

Since January 2011 I’ve been on Host Geek’s Savvy Geek plan, which costs $10 a month, but I pay yearly for a discounted $100 per year. Note that there are cheaper plans, starting from $5 a month or $50 per year.

The features of my current plan include:

• 1GB disk space
• 20GB bandwidth per month
• Unlimited add-on domains – this is one of my favourite features. It means you can host an unlimited number of domains, pointed to your server. At the moment I’ve got deanwormald.com and youmakethewebsite.com.au hosted here plus a few others for web design clients of mine.
• Unlimited subdomains
• cPanel for automated installation of software like WordPress, and easy hosting management.
• Comprehensive database support and lots of server side scripts.
• + heaps more.

How Host Geek compares to others

I’ve used a fair few different hosting providers such as CrazyDomains, HostGator, RackSpace and BlueHost. Host Geek is on par with price for most of these providers – but there are things that really stand out…

• Host Geek has great support – crucial if something goes wrong.
• Heavy restrictions don’t limit the performance of your hosting – meaning your site runs faster.

When I used CrazyDomains and HostGator, a response from their support to my question would usually take 72 hours. Host Geek respond to me within 24 hours, even on a weekend! I’ve found this really handy when building a site, as I don’t want to pause for 3 days, just for someone at tech support to help out with a 2 minute fix.

Other cheap web hosts put heavy restrictions on the performance of your site, and the resources it can use. This makes many aspects of websites, like sliding image carousels, simply impossible. Host Geek doesn’t have these restrictions.

Why I love Host Geek and have stuck with them

Initially I chose HostGeek because they are an Australian company with servers hosted in Australia. As well as this personal blog of mine, I make websites for local Australian businesses, and there are local SEO benefits to hosting your site in Australia.

I’ve stuck with HostGeek because it’s been a very hassle free experience, my sites have performed well and it’s really easy to manage WordPress.

Support is great

As mentioned above, the support is great, looking back over the 16 support tickets I’ve submitted, here’s a few interesting stats:

• Average response time was about 55 minutes!
• About 1/3 of the tickets were sent on a weekend.
• In 14/16 instances, HostGeek fixed the problem or answered my question with their first response – no additional back and forth messaging required.
• They do offer Live Help chat on the site and a contact phone number, but I’ve always used the online ticket system.

Easy to use control panel

I’m great at building website, SEO and information design. I’m not good at configuring hosting and that’s why I love using cPanel (the hosting control panel that comes with HostGeek). It’s fast and easy to do anything such as:

• Creating email accounts and checking them by webmail
• Making and restoring site/database backups
• Using File Manager to manage files instead of FTP
• Easily create and manage FTP accounts
• Check on disk space usage, error logs, usage stats by domain, etc
• Automatically install WordPress using Installatron

Here’s a look at cPanel for my hosting:

Automatic Application (including WordPress) Installation

If you’ve seen the instructions on how to install WordPress on share hosting manually, it looks quite daunting. I’ve never successfully done it myself. That’s why I love this feature of the control panel – it’s called Installatron.

Installing WordPress is easy and fast, another one of my favourite things about HostGeek. To install WordPress, all you have to do is:

• Login to your hosting control panel.
• Click the Installatron icon.
• Find/search for WordPrses and click the icon.
• Click the Install this application button.
• Fill out the simple form (i.e. admin username and password).
• Then click install.

The Installatron system then automatically creates the directories needed, the database and then sends you an email with your login credentials.

Installatron will also email you when there is a new version of WordPress, making it easy to stay up-to-date with the software.

HostGeek website hosting rating

To give you a bit of an experience of my experiences, here’s a rating out of 10 for HostGeek and the others I’ve used:

• HostGeek: 8.5/10
• CrazyDomains: 3/10
• HostGator: 5/10
• RackSpace: 4/10
• BlueHost: 5/10

HostGeek discount code

Get 10% off hosting for life using the following code (be sure to follow the instructions for it to work):

•  Click the button below to start browsing the hosting plans (link will open in a new window).

[button link=”http://deanwormald.com/visit/hostgeek/” type=”big” color=”green” newwindow=”yes”] HostGeek hosting plans[/button]

• From the home page, click Hosting
• Click on Shared Web hosting
• Click the sign up button under the hosting plan you’d like to buy
• Follow the prompts for your domain name and payment (strongly recommend buying your domain name at the same time, if you don’t already have one)
• Enter and validate the promo code: YM10

Conclusion

If you’re looking for cheap, local hosting with good support and an easy interface to install WordPress… then these guys are for you!

If you have any questions about don’t hesitate to ask me in the comments below.

When it comes to website hosting: you get what you pay for.

The super cheap website hosts usually have the same things in common:

Australian WordPress cloud website hosting

Recently I switched from what I thought was a reputable cloud hosting provider, based in San Fransico USA. Although I was paying more than the low cost providers, my sites on that server had a lot downtime.

This week I switched to Crucial in Australia (check out their cloud website hosting packages). The migration from my old host was super easy, everything was done literally within minutes. I’m on their cloud business web host package as I run multiple WordPress websites (so I need more than one database). If you’re only running one WordPress website all you need is their SOHO package (with 1 database).

Within just a couple of days I’ve found they don’t share the common faults of cheaper web host providers. The experience so far:

Cloud Business Web Host Package

The specs on this package are awesome: 10 GB storage, 250 GB monthly data, 10 databases. One of my websites receives over 10,000 unique visitors every month and roughly 25,000 page views every month. All of the pages on this site have large high resolution photos… and that only uses about 25 to 30 GB of data per month.

Why should I spend more than $5 a month on website hosting?

For many people, a website is a critical part of their business. If a website isn’t up and running then it’s not generating money for you.

For me, I run a successful Japan Travel Blog that needed fast, rock-solid hosting. After using one website host for $15 a month, I knew I needed faster SSD Australian WordPress cloud website hosting.

In my early years as a web designer it was more important to save a few dollars a month than it was to have a stable and reliable website. Now I need the stability and performance, so I chose Crucial’s Australian cloud website hosting.

Easy WordPress installation

Installation of WordPress is super simple. No coding or scripts. Crucial provide cPanel access for their cloud web host packages. After logging in to cPanel (you’ll get the access details after you sign up), simply follow these steps to install:

On the cPanel home page, scroll down to Softaculous Apps Installer

Click the WordPress icon

Click Install

Then fill out the details on the next screen and click Install at the bottom of the page.

Discounted Australian WordPress cloud website hosting

Final verdict

Last year I spent a few months in Fremantle. It was a very unique situation with a few very good mates. It was my first time in Western Australia and I loved the Fremantle area. It was good to be back.

Muttonbird Island is accessed via the jetty at Coffs Harbour. Not exactly a beach visit. Just behind where I took this photo is the tiny (150m long) Gallow’s Beach and then the north end of Boambee Beach. I still need to visit Boambee Beach…