Ok, this article is for those who run their own server, whether it’s a Virtual Private Server or a dedicated server.

There’s lots of articles available on how to set up each of these, but I thought for now I’ll just make a statement on what the best server setup is, then I’ll expand on my own setup in later articles.

Webserver: Nginx – incredibly fast, simply blows Apache out of the water.

PHP: v5.3.6 in PHP-FPM mode, with APC.

Front-End Cache: Varnish – will speed up serving your website incredibly, which will help the visitor experience and help boost your search engine ranking.

CMS: WordPress – yes, that old favourite. Make sure you use the plugin W3 Total Cache which can also refresh  Varnish for you.

Ok, that was just a quick list. Later there will be a short tutorial explaining the setup of these.

I think it’s only appropriate that I kick off with the first post about the WordPress theme I am using. Yes, it might change later – but for a start-up blog it’s pretty awesome.

It’s the Suffusion WordPress Theme.

When you create a WordPress site, it’s important to get a proper theme up, or something you can get started with but gives you lots of flexibility later.

I looked at Thesis, Genesis and Headway – and they are all great. But, of course, they cost a bit of money.

No, don’t misunderstand me. If you got cash to splash, I’d recommend either Thesis or Genesis as they are both great themes, and give you a lot of flexibility. But you should also consider the Suffusion WordPress Theme. If you’re a novice it might not be suitable, as it’s very, very flexible and have a LOT of options. The author even shows, in big letters, “DON’T PANIC” on the theme settings page.

But if you have any clue about WordPress and have looked into themes in the past, you could do a lot worse than giving some thoughts to using Suffusion on your site.

It has a few very useful Social Media widgets, comes with 17 pre-defined color schemes, has lots of different page layouts and generally does everything you’ll need. It has more predefined widgets areas than you can fill with widgets, just take a look at the graphic on the right!

Best of all? It’s 100% free, and can be downloaded directly from the WordPress site using the Theme Manager within WordPress itself.

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