Oh, that's really nice!
Well, if that's the case, I'd suggest you to get the Business Plan on Hostinger (or anything similar com SiteGround or other good hosting company), it's as low as $4/month and you'll be good with a custom domain of your own choice, like "myscientificblog.com" for free in the first year (and you can buy as many other domains as you want without needing a hosting service from any company).
Wordpress.com's free subdomain will only allow you to use something like "myscientificblog.wordpress.com" which lack the professional approach you'd want to transmit. And Wordpress hosting plans are way more expensive and offer way less resources, that's the main reason people here told you to stay away from Wordpress.com paid hosting services (differently from wordpress.org which is just the whole community ecosystem and CMS, and not a hosting company).
Best of luck to you!
No worries, buddy. So, for your question, well, you don't really have to pay for anything else, these 3 assets are good enough to let you build almost anything, yeah.
But there are some other plugins that are worth their prices. But it took me some really specific demands to need ACF Pro and GridBuilder, also ASE and Whitelabel CMS are also good enough in their free versions, but offer a lot more in Pro. RankMath Pro also might be really useful in some more needing cases, but I didn't need it so far.
I also use Hostinger, have been with them for around 1 year now, it's been a really great experiece, they offer awesome support as well.
Man, you really have no clue what Elementor is, right?
Elementor itself is a plugin. A WordPress plugin. This plugin is a builder that lets you edit WordPress pages and site parts' templates in a different manner compared to the native way of doing it, it gives you control over every layout module of your website, so you can mostly design it pixel by pixel if you want. Also it adds some other really useful features, such as the Role Manager, like the fellow above mentioned, and some others.
- If you buy one of the "Website Builder Plugin" plans (https://elementor.com/pricing-plugin/), you get only the license for the Elementor website builder plugin. That's it. So you'd need to get the other stuff elsewhere by yourself, i.e. the hosting and domain. That's what I'd recommend.
- They also offer hosting plans (https://elementor.com/pricing/) that already includes the "Elementor website builder plugin" license with them. But all their plans are too limited for my taste.
Do some research on YouTube, as also suggested by our fellow above.
Here are some useful starting stuff:
- Rino de Boer (Living with Pixels): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E15iQEm9KF8
- Nomade, some random guy with a really useful video for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-u-FHlxVig
Good luck there, mate
You're welcome, that's my pleasure, now a upvote in return (or if you've already upvoted, it's gotta be that god damn anonymous downvoter nemesis of mine)
cya
For responsiveness, I'd recommend variable units related to the viewport width, so it stays pleasant to the eyes on any screen...
On laptop and tablet I use 85% boxed on parent containers and 90% for mobile, when I don't want full-width content
Hello there!
Have you managed to sort it out?
It's often indispensable (sometimes PODs get the work done, but ACF is way more refined).
Imran from WebSquadron, Daveden and WPTuts are my takes when it comes to ACF or PODs
Awesome, thanks for the insights!
I'm on the beginning of my business carreer, so every piece of knowledge I can gather from more experienced fellows like you is a great step up
I get it now, thank you very much!
I've been using Hostinger with their Cloud plans (haven't gone to VPS yet with any of my clients); I have watched some stress tests, summed up to your comment now and, for the purposes I've faced so far regarding clients' needs, these plans will surelly fulfill all the scaling path those clients could ever glimpse to reach.
And WP Engine is a great option for sure, been hearing more and more good things about them. Would you say it's worth starting to place new clients there, instead of Hostinger?
THAT would be nice to see. Man, I had never thought of Elementor becoming a whole CMS in the place of WordPress.
It would be awesome to be able to build even the admin panels with Elementor if we wanted to, or even deeper customize it more easily.
That would be nice
Hello there! Could you explain to me why it's not good for higher-traffic websites?
Once I talked to someone that said things in the site would start to break when traffic started to grow much, that when too many requests were gonna be generated and components there woudn't be able to keep up, something like this.
What's your vision on this subject?
Just to straighten both concepts for you:
Actually, wordpress.com is the domain, and what's being offered for free to you is the subdomain of your choice, so the structure is:
As for the rest, people here gave good advice, and my opinion is the same as follows:
Only get the free wordpress.com subdomain if it's not a professional blog or if you want to practice. If that's for professional purposes, then buy your own domain and hosting plan. (I've been with Hostinger for a while and it's been great, they also have awesome support, so I recommend them)
I have some options out of my mind:
You can just use Loop Grid with the loop item being a CTA widget (it has the hovering feature you want; or the Portfolio widget (also features that).
I've also created a custom post type for taxonomy pursoses with advanced filtering with the Taxono Filter widget
I really don't get why some people here are against doing doing things the right way. The moment you say "you should have the client's permission to put your link there or to use their website in your portfolio" you get a downvote.
That's unbelievable
We're agreeing on that, mate; but somehow you and at least 7 other people did't get the point of my first comment, as it had the purposed to endorse yours
That may be, but even then it wouldn't be nice to portray them in this postion without asking them beforehand if they're all right with it, specially when we depend on them and when an action like this might impact someone else directly, it needs to come to their knowing and get their permission, at least that's my point of view
That's exactly my point, it's ok when both parts have agreed beforehand, otherwise it feels wrong to do it without asking the contractor nor explicitly stating it on the contract...................... 
omg they've convinced you it's a disability
It's like taking a photo of your neighboors through their window while they're dinning and displaying them in your food website, and you think you have the right to do so without asking them for permission just because you gifted them the turkey or the table they're using
Even though people here seem to get hurt by saying "Elementor" as it was "Lord Voldemort", it simply addresses you question, clean and straight.
Haven't been here for long and I'm not an advanced user nor have I claimed not to be limited myself (?); I'm interested in delivering solutions as a business and for that Elementor (or other page builders) works great.
The goal of my comment was to address the limitations you pointed out yourself, the simple things you pointed out as complicated with vanilla WordPress, ending up asking if you should go back to pure coding or if there are any plugins to help you out.
A variant of my initial answer is: go with pagebuilders + ACF to overcome the limitations you're talking about.
You know, since you asked for plugin recommendations to make development easier, that was a suggestion alonside some other page builders that can get you out of these restrains, other than that you'll keep feeling the "so limited" experience. Those are some of the ways I know (bound to ACF or other custom field and post types platform).
You could also go with developing your own themes or go for headless wp, as suggested in another comment, but that's another realm apart from the simpler plugins alternative.
But forget it, it wasn't my purpose at all to help you, the intention has always been to farm downvotes. Thanks guys
Thank you, sir
Photopaint question, lighten greys but not black (Cmyk)
coreldraw