About Frank
A front-end developer who has spent his career building for the web — and who builds most of his own sites on WordPress.
Hi, I'm Frank
I've worked as a front-end developer since I graduated in 2016. Over that time I've also done custom WordPress development and built WordPress themes from scratch, so I've spent a lot of time on both sides of a WordPress site: the dashboard a site owner sees, and the code underneath it.
Most of my own websites run on WordPress. A few are built with React or Vue and server-side rendering. I use both, so I don't treat WordPress as the answer to everything. When I recommend it, it's because it's the right fit for the job.
Why this site exists
Launching a first website means making decisions you don't have the background for yet: which host, which plan, which theme, which plugins. Most of the advice out there is either too technical to follow or written to sell you something. PlainWP aims to sit in between: plain-English guides that explain what actually matters, written by a working developer.
What a developer's background brings to these guides
- I look under the hood. Custom WordPress work and building themes taught me how much code a page loads, and why a bloated theme or a stack of overlapping plugins makes a site slow. That's why I lean toward lightweight tools like GeneratePress.
- I know what hosting actually has to do. Caching, PHP versions, SSL, backups, and staging aren't marketing checkboxes to me. They're things a site depends on, and I explain them that way.
- I explain things for beginners. The guides skip the jargon unless you need it, and when a term matters, I tell you what it means.
How I decide what to recommend
- By situation, not by commission. For most beginners, my first pick is SiteGround for hosting and GeneratePress for the theme. When your situation is different, like a tight budget, a need for cPanel, a growing store, or a site that has outgrown shared hosting, I point you to the option that fits it better.
- The downsides get written up too. Renewal prices go up, entry plans have limits, and some tools aren't beginner-friendly. If something is true and matters to your decision, it goes in the article.
- I don't make things up. Prices and plan details come from the provider's own pages, and each table carries the date I last checked it, so you can see how current it is. Where a detail isn't published anywhere, I leave it out rather than fill the gap with a guess.
How this site makes money
Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy through one, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That's what keeps the guides free. The details, including every program I'm part of, are on theaffiliate disclosure page.
Found something outdated?
Hosting plans and prices change often, and I'd rather fix a mistake than leave it up.Articles are re-checked on a regular schedule, and each one shows when it was last updated.