‘Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.’
R. Buckminster Fuller

The technology we use for this website is intentionally simple. This website exists as the core domain authority and canon for two newsletter properties, on Substack and Medium respectively. It will shortly be extended by adding Kit as our preferred email service provider and list manager, but we haven’t done that yet.

Read on if you want something similar for your own site, and keep this thought top of mind as you consider this (and other) alternatives:

With great flexibility comes great time wasting.

We’ve been through a few iterations over the years, and what follows is now the standard Stratify technology stack.

Framework

WordPress. We’ve seen WordPress grow since version 2.x (it’s now version 6.x). Sure, it’s got a bit bloated. Yet there’s an enormous community out there to help with any question that comes up. And it’s free.

Theme

The free version of GeneratePress. It’s simple and it offers all the features we want. We should say this – we experimented with high-end themes like Avada and The7 and, as powerful and flexible as they are, there’s a steep learning curve you need to deal with before you get passable results.

GeneratePress does all that we need for our purposes. It’s quick, customisable, and SEO-friendly. There is a premium version of GeneratePress as well. We don’t need the extras it provides.

Plugins

Just 4 optional WordPress plugins (Hostinger installs a few others, so we don’t count them as optional):

• SEOPress. It takes some time to set up, but it’s wickedly full-featured and even uses AI to generate SEO-friendly image alt-text, meta titles and meta descriptions. SEOPress adds Dublin Core metadata for more search engine goodness and uses Google’s APIs for fast index updates. If you don’t know what all that means – they are good things to have, and SEOPress does them all automatically.
• Site Kit by Google. This free plugin connects our site with some desirable Google services – Google Analytics, PageSpeed, and Search Console. We could do all this manually, but this plugin just makes it all happen.
• Redirect URL to Post. This is an insanely powerful plugin, yet we use it simply to navigate to a random post via a link. It does this supremely well. It’s free, too.
• GutenBee. This handy plugin adds 27 blocks to WordPress that help us create the user experience we hope to provide. So far we only use a few of the blocks included, but it’s good to know they’re on tap when we get more adventurous. This is another free plugin.

Domain name

We use VentraIP. Australian owned, local support, on-the-money pricing. What’s not to like?

Hosting

Hostinger. It was a price-based decision to move from our previous host but Hostinger has worked out pretty good, and they serve our web properties really fast. A few things to know:

• They are headquartered in Cyprus and (for Australian customers like Stratify) comply with the Australian Privacy Principles and the Australian Privacy Act (1988).
• They have WordPress-specific hosting. Installing and maintaining WordPress is stupid easy with their toolset.
• Free SSL certificates. No SEO penalties for not offering https:// instead of the older and less secure http:// protocol. It just happens, seamlessly.
• Stratify hosts multiple websites on the same account. Every one has its own SSL certificate, which is a big deal.

We’ve been with Hostinger for a couple of years. There’s no reason to change.