u/storieswithvenky

Moved my writing off Instagram and onto Wordpress about 18 months ago. The site is now my main publishing home for long-form trip reports, a podcast, and a small store. Sharing the build decisions here because most Wordpress posts I see online are either "best plugins of 2026" listicles or beginner tutorials, and there is not much in between.

The stack:

• Theme: Blocksy
• Page builder: Elementor Pro
• SEO: RankMath
• Email and CRM: FluentCRM
• Security: Wordfence
• Performance: WP-Optimize
• Hosting: GoDaddy India

What I got right:

1. Blocksy as the base theme. Light, fast, customisable in the customiser without needing the builder for everything. I use Elementor Pro only for specific landing pages and the page templates that need flexibility, not for routine posts. This keeps page weight down where it matters.
2. RankMath over Yoast. Cleaner UI, free schema markup features, and the schema setup did not need a developer. Worth the switch in my opinion.
3. WP-Optimize for caching and DB cleanup. Set it and forget it. Page speeds are reasonable even on photo-heavy trip reports.
4. Amazon SES paired with FluentCRM. FluentCRM handles the list management and automations, SES handles the actual sending. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records configured properly. Inbox placement improved noticeably after switching from default Wordpress mail. The SES verification process took about a week including the production access request, but the deliverability difference is real.

What I got wrong and would redo:

1. Started on GoDaddy India because it was convenient at the time. Have not migrated. Page speeds are okay but not great, and I keep hearing the sub recommend Cloudways or Hostinger. Open to being convinced one way or the other.
2. Categories and tags got messy in the first 6 months. Had to clean up about 80 posts when I rationalised the taxonomy. Should have planned this on day one before publishing anything.
3. Wordfence was overkill for my traffic level for the first year. Added latency. Now configured more conservatively. For low-traffic personal sites, the default Wordfence settings are heavier than they need to be.
4. Elementor Pro tempted me into building too many fancy sections in the first 6 months. Removed most of them eventually. Plain blog post template performs better than designed page layouts for actual readers.

The unsolved problem: signup form design and double optin flow.

Currently sitting at 1 to 2 percent visitor to subscriber conversion. Not catastrophic but not great. If anyone has cracked the signup form aesthetics on Blocksy or has a clean double optin setup they like, I would like to hear how.

Site is storieswithvenky.com if anyone wants to see the live setup. Linking so you can see the form placements in context if you want to give specific advice, not for traffic.

I am from India. I spent time in Loliondo, December last year, on a clean water project at Bright English Medium School and ended up making a 37 minute film about the school's founder, Juliana.

For anyone here who does not know the school, it is in northern Tanzania, in the Maasai community of Loliondo. Juliana started it 15 years ago in a rented house with a small group of children. The school now has over 500 students. She has done all of this with very little outside help and a lot of stubbornness.

I am not Tanzanian and I know this is a story that belongs to your country, not mine. I just had the privilege of being there long enough to film it. If anyone here is from Loliondo or has any connection to BEMS, I would love to hear from you. If anything in the film feels off, please tell me.

The film is in English and Swahili with subtitles in English. Free on YouTube. Phase 1 of the water project on school grounds is complete.