Host – WordPress.com
This site is being hosted on WordPress.com using their $15/month “WordPress Pro” plan. I’ve tried numerous hosts over the years including Siteground (absolutely awful), Namecheap (very bad), self hosted using Unraid and Docker (pretty good, but slow bandwidth), and Digital Ocean (not bad), and WordPress.com.
This is actually my third time hosting this site at WordPress.com. Why?
- The $15/month plan is new, lower priced that their previous business plan, and quite competitive pricing wise compared to other hosts.
- Contrary to what you read online, you can indeed add your own themes and plugins. I’m not sure where this idea came from – that you need to self host to use your own plugins. It’s just not true. If I had to guess, I think this lie keeps getting propagated by various reviewers that get commissions if you click links to whatever hosting site their recommending.
- WordPress.com’s customer support is fantastic and quick to respond.
- No need to mess with any of the hosting settings. Everything works out of the gate.
- Included CDN.
- Fast servers and responsive interface.
- A reasonable amount of storage vs other option.
Mura Theme by 3FortyMedia
As of the time of this writing, it’s a relatively new WordPress theme, so there are a few quirks that I think need fixing.
There currently is an issue with the “back to top” arrow that the developer gave me a workaround for. Basically, the arrow would turn black when clicked, but wouldn’t change back to its default color. The fix that they gave me was to use CSS to prevent it from turning black.
Also, there’s an issue with the sizing of the search bar on mobile. I emailed the developer, and they informed me that it’s a known issue on iOS, and will be fixed in the next update.
I ended up buying the theme for $39 since it was new and on sale. Overall, not a bad value.
3FortyMedia’s support is top notch. I wanted quite a few customizations in terms of width on mobile, repositioning of the back to top arrow, making the excerpt a link and clickable, and a few other tweaks. The developer was very helpful, gave me some tips, and even sent me the necessary code to fix things.
Theme Tweaks
Child Theme Required for Clickable Excerpts on Homepage
Within the child theme, the file functions.php needs to be edited, and the following code needs to be added:
Related Posts – Clickable Excerpts
Edit the following file:
tfm-related-posts/plugin-parts/related-posts.php and replace the code with the following:
All Theme Customizations
Using the Customizer Export/Import Plugin, here all all the customizations and tweaks I’ve made to the theme.
WordPress.com Tweaks
Disable the WordPress.com Toolbar and Use the WordPress.org (i.e. Classic) Toolbar
First, install the plugin entitled Code Snippets, then add / enable the following snippet (I named mine “Disable WordPress.com Toolbar”):
function disable_wpcomtoolbar ( $modules ) { if ( isset( $modules['masterbar'] ) ) { unset( $modules['masterbar'] ); } return $modules; } add_filter( 'jetpack_get_available_modules', 'disable_wpcomtoolbar' );Enable Any Type of File Upload
You’ll need to edit the wp-config.php file, and add the following code right before the line that reads ‘That’s all, stop editing! Happy publishing.‘
define('ALLOW_UNFILTERED_UPLOADS', true);