So I have done a fair bit since my last post, and not so much ;P The following is what I have been doing and have achieved:

• Created an account with Buddy Works , which is a site deployment tool, and setup a “Pipeline” to release this site as a “in development” version.
  • This was after long research – Buddy Works turns out to be FREE for up to 5 hosts – which is the only one I could find with this free option. I tried to go down the Jenkins with Docker path, but kept hitting roadblocks (such as Docker requires Windows 10 PRO, it can run on Linux box – but then I need to rethink my local development environment…. bah… Buddy Works does the job I want at the moment)
• Worked out a development process to use for building and deploying this site – and hopefully can re-use this strategy for building real sites.
• Cleaned up this site based on  Google Page Insights and this included the following:
  • Minified JS and CSS (I havent bothered with the HTML)
  • Removed the render blocking JS, and CSS. (after MUCH research)
  • Investigated why my host is SLOW – in case there was something I could do. Came to conclusion – I am on the cheapest host plan (you get what you pay for). Will look at bumping that up down the track.

So, whats next? Need to clean up the content on my site. I still have a bit of “lorem itsem” placeholders I need to clean up, and then I can take the next step of a “staging” site, and after that I can create a GO LIVE site! YAY! 🙂