Hosting
I have a VPS server from Cloudways. Performance and support is great, they take care of offsite backups and provide a free SSL certificate all for a really low price.
I moved to Cloudways after trouble getting my previous shared hosting provider working with my Ad network. But have found the performance is so much better and I have a VPS now rather than a shared hosting plan for virtually the same price as I was previously paying.
I use their DigitalOcean 2GB Plan.
Ad Network
Ezoic are incredible! We would all prefer a world without Ad’s. But a website costs money and creating content for free is pretty rubbish. I used to use Adsense, but I more than tripled my revenue overnight moving to Ezoic.
Apart from the increased revenue they have some great tools. I find their Analytics suite they include for free to be fair better than Google Analytics. They also provide my CDN and caching. I am a big fan!
Read my full review here – My First 10 Weeks with Ezoic a 280% increase in Earnings
Theme
I wanted a fast theme but still with lots of flexibility. Generate Press ticked all the boxes for me. They have a really cool site library with premade templates so you can get up and running very easily,
Even with Ad’s running on this site I can still hit a 98 desktop Google Page Speed insights scores thanks to the this theme and my hosting setup.
The core functionality is free, I am using the premium addon to gets some of the etc bells and whistles.
Continued Learning
They have great content and a really good platform to track your learning progress, with practice and content covering every area I need. If I am working towards a certifications or implementing a new technology they are my first choice. They normally have a 10 day free trial running, so give it a go and see what you think.
Other Projects
Ask the Meerkat
You you like the content on this site you may also be interested in one of my other sites AskTheMeerkat.com. A site full of useful tools for people in the IT Admin of software development sectors.
Binary Blitz
If you are into networking or looking to take a certification such as the CCNA or CCNP my game Binary Blitz is an excellent way to practice and perfect you binary and subnetting skills.