Very good video Pieter, should be a breeze teaching those students I'm sure you will do well. Reckon you should take your guitar in and treat them all to a song before starting out for the day, would have loved something like that back in the day :-)

I have hosted and maintained a handful of WP sites but mostly found them to be way to much admin and so resource hungry. One site I took on for a mate came with a virus, had been previously hacked which was a nightmare. However, I persevered and got it working for him. One plus that came out of that experience was an introduction to Pinegrow, a desktop app for all things WP but also a good general purpose visual builder for static sites, way cheaper than Webflow.

Good to see you guys rocking on with web stuff

Thanks David. I'm trying to keep both worlds separated. Showbizz and teaching :) Two different things as such, but indeed, it helps to be used to take the stage ... in a way. I have to sell my website design as hard as I have to sell my music when performing. Sure thing.

I tested Pinegrow one day (the free trial). I was impressed I remember. It also comes with a WordPress theme builder I see.

https://hcstudios.be/ is our latest project. That's a WP site

> One site I took on for a mate came with a virus, had been previously hacked which was a nightmare

A long time ago I did a proposal for a local town hall using QS. Long story short, they went with a guy using WP because "he was a photographer as well and could take all their publicity shots without them being involved"

About 5 months later their site had crashed and there was "no content to be found on the site". They rang me for (free) advice and of course I said just use your back ups. You guessed didn't you? No back ups and the WP version was wildly out of date. It wasn't anything complicated or sinister - just some spotty script kiddie.

So they had to rebuild the site from scratch - using the same version of WP. I actually emailed them and said it needed to be updated and kept up to date, but they ignored me.

Unsurprisingly, the got hacked again and all their data was deleted. Did they have a backup this time? Of course not.

The best part was that they rang me a week later. Because I had been so helpful would I rebuild their web site..... for free because they had spent all their budget! I couldn't help but I admire their "chutzpah"

I just looked, I think they stuck with WP but I don't know if this is up to date any more (the sun shines too much!)

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Incredible story, Bob.

The reality is that using WordPress no longer provides peace of mind; any core version, theme, or plugin can fail or be compromised at any moment. This has been a harsh reality for the past 15 years and remains unchanged today. I am not accustomed to this uncertainty. Since addressing the security issues with QS back in 2008, I have been confident that QS is as secure as software can be.

Currently, this server hosts 189 WordPress sites, all operating on the latest version of WP, utilizing a single theme (Twenty Twenty Four) and only three plugins. For security reasons, my students are prohibited from installing additional themes or plugins. Thus far, everything has been stable; I haven't encountered any issues, hacks, or crashes.

The main attraction of WordPress is its cost—it's free and widely used. Competing with a free option is nearly impossible, and convincing a large user base to switch to an alternative is equally daunting.

Regarding server resources, David is correct: WordPress requires 60MB for installation (without any plugins and just one theme) and an additional 10MB for its MySQL database, totaling 70MB to get started. However, it does not demand more RAM or CPU than other content management systems. At least I have no complaints in that area.

Overall, the latest WP version and the Twenty Twenty Four theme are quite robust and versatile. I find myself looking forward to the Twenty Twenty Five theme set to release in November. However, I suspect it will only be a minor update from Twenty Twenty Four.

This brings us to updates. I stopped updating QS in 2014, so it now appears completely outdated, even though it can still create attractive and modern websites. People expect constant updates. Yet with each release comes new issues and security challenges—a paradox indeed. Many believe that regular updates ensure product safety when often it leads to the opposite.

Isn't it remarkable that we're having this conversation on this website, ten years after the last QS release? I genuinely appreciate that!

1. WP 6.7 the new install size goes up to 80MB ! When I started in 2011-12 it was 6MB and I thought that was too much... WP is now the equivalent of MS Windows... for websites.

2. Pieter, I know which 3 plugins you are using, but I would strongly recommend 2 VERY essential ones to be added to the list:

There are many on both categories but I have narrowed my decisions to:

- For securoty I use FluentAuth - https://wordpress.org/plugins/fluent-security/ You cannot believe how many hacking attempts this plugin stops, I'm averaging 2-3 a week, and without this plugin, I'm sure it would have been dozens.

- If somehow they manage to pass Hostinger's firewalls (my cloud hosting provider), I use an automated backup plugin WPvivid - https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpvivid-backuprestore/ This is not only an automated backup plugin but also a migration plugin, staging. It has a premium version to backup Multisites, migrate a site from a multisite to a single site installation, but more importantly, the ability to store the backups, including the auto backups in a cloud storage like OneDrive, Dropbox, etc...

With WP you have to know what you are doing, understand the risks (13,000 sites get hacked every day), but most importantly you have to have defensive forces, and if they fail, which will fail one day, have the backups OUT OF SITE, to recover as soon as possible. Hostinger has an automated security checkup system to scan for viruses and malware, and daily backup system as well, along with their firewall. As of now, nobody has successfully hacked any of my sites, but when (not if) they do, I'm fully prepared.

Another important note when it comes to security. You can get hacked by simply trusting third party sites. For example. Divi has this new plugin to manage many websites from one place - called the Dash. Imagine you have hundreds of sites, and you have to manually log in in to them one by one for updates... With this you can do all that from one place with a few clicks. The problem is that each site's Admin credentials are stored ON THEIR SERVERS. If their servers get hacked, your website's credentials will be public. Or if they have a disgruntled employee, you are done ! Thankfully, Hostinger has a similar service, and they already have all my info, so I can trust them. With my plan I can have 300 WP installs, and can update, disable, add plugins and themes to any site, with a few clicks, I can even batch update plugins or themes across all sites !

One last point (I run out of characters before):

Just because you have the latest versions of the WP core, plugins, and themes, it DOES NOT MEAN you are secure. A new version of a plugin or theme, can introduce new security holes, which did not exist with the previous versions.

With the WP core, it's a total joke. Every 3-4 months they come with a new version. EVERY SINGLE TIME about after a major release, they come with another minor update, many times more than once, where if you look at the update logs, are mostly security fixes, on average of about 10 of them for each case, sometimes more. So each time updating to a new WP version immediately after a major update, puts you in the greatest risk. The safest thing is to wait 2-3 weeks for the patched version(s) to come out, but with this, you are delaying all the new features that come with the new versions as well. That's why once again, having off site backups and a good security plugin and firewall are crucial. Building a site today is too easy, you can teach a monkey to do it, keeping it safe, fast, and SEO optimized is a whole different ballgame, which many do not understand or care, until they DO - just ask any of the 13,000 site owners that finally get it, EACH SINGLE DAY !

Thanks Nick. I do not trust plugin developers. I kind of trust the WP core developers. Well, we have to, isn't it?

I add this line:
define('DISALLOW_FILE_MODS', true);
to all my sites in wp-config.php.

I guess this prevents both the core and the plugins to modify any file in my codebase, except for the mediafiles. Not sure though.

This way, automated updates are disabled, and my students cannot upload, update or add new plugins or themes. I really think that is a effective way to somehow protect myself againt hackers.

So far so good. I have not seen any suspicious behaviour on any of the sites or the server.