GP Links and Referrals
Here are all the links and referrals intended to help you get started. Remember, WVPP will receive a kickback for you accepting referrals. It's a way of donating! If you have used a service before, there's not much we can do. You would want to start a mission of raising donations.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare (CF) direct link: Connect & protect with the connectivity cloud | Cloudflare
SSL side note
While Let's Encrypt will be used here, it is possible to use Cloudflare to generate an origin certificate. Meaning, you would instead use Cloudflare to issue certificates for your server instead of Let's Encrypt. You may find this in your Cloudflare's SSL settings after adding your domain.
Digital Ocean
Digital Ocean (referral link): https://m.do.co/c/7dafff9ab7fd
If you're new with Digital Ocean (DO), this referral should give you $200 for a total of 60 days. WVPP will receive $25 once you have spent $25.
This service costs monthly or yearly, depending on how you wish to handle your payments.
Ubuntu
You may want to familiarize yourself with Ubuntu. It's not important to know it intensely, but this is the distribution of GNU/Linux we'll be using throughout the process.
Here is the desktop version, Download Ubuntu Desktop | Download | Ubuntu
Except, we'll be using the headless (no graphical user interface) version.
PuTTY (Windows user)
Download PuTTY here, PuTTY: a free SSH and Telnet client (greenend.org.uk)
This is a client to use from Windows to dial into the Linux instance.
Let's Encrypt
Free alternative to paid SSL certificates, Let's Encrypt (letsencrypt.org)
The secure socket layer provider we'll be using.
WordPress
View here, Blog Tool, Publishing Platform, and CMS – WordPress.org
WordPress has a paid choice but it's also open source and you may self-host it. Plugin and theme customization will be covered.
MariaDB
View here, MariaDB Foundation - MariaDB.org
A fork of MySQL, another database server. WordPress will use MariaDB to store data.