HOSTING
I had my sites on a shared-hosting server and the sites frequently ran very slowly. I tried a VPS (virtual private server) but it was very expensive, had a lot of restrictions and was much harder to set up and use.
I did a lot of research and found a hosting company that claimed to have shared-hosting that was consistently fast (under 2 seconds a page*). I tried them out and they have been great! They are at https://www.siteground.com/go/mybestsites
So for my hosting recommendation for WordPress sites for superior speed, high security, great features and stellar customer support (often under 8 minutes for tech support tickets) – click on the link above or below and you can save 45-60%, as well as getting site transfer at no charge, free SSL, and a free domain name, if you need one.
If you only plan to ever have one site, choose the StartUp plan. If you plan to have more sites, choose the GrowBig plan and then click Get Started or Order Now.
Click on https://www.siteground.com/go/mybestsites and follow the prompts.
*They do it by using Solid State Drives, NGINX web server technology utilizing the newest, fastest HTTP /2 network protocol, Cloudflare CDN (content delivery network), very effective caching and other speed-increasing technologies.