FFC charity WordPress sites combine six distinct vendor services in a single stack. Each layer has a clear owner, a clear escalation path, and a clear failure mode. This page is the operations-team reference for that stack — use it when triaging a charity issue, onboarding a new volunteer admin, or scoping a migration off WordPress.
The charity-facing version of this content lives at freeforcharity.org/techstack/ and uses simpler “your house” metaphors for non-technical charity staff. The layers below preserve those metaphors as anchors.
How to use this page
Each layer below documents what it is, who owns it, how to escalate, and the operational notes a volunteer admin needs to know — including the gotchas that show up during static-site conversions.
If a charity issue is unresolved within 48 hours, text Clarke Moyer (FFC founder) at 520-222-8104 — same cadence as the charity-facing page.
The six layers
- Foundation: Hosting Infrastructure
- WordPress Installation: Softaculous
- Plugins: WPMUDEV Suite
- Theme: Divi
- DNS and SSL: Cloudflare
- Email: Microsoft 365
Layer 1 — Foundation: Hosting Infrastructure
The land beneath the house.
Vendor: InterServer (DirectAdmin) — legacy; Hostinger (hPanel) for current sites
Responsibility: Physical servers, network, and the OS-level control panel that hosts every charity WordPress install.
Escalation path:
- Vendor support (InterServer or Hostinger) for outages, server errors, disk / quota issues.
- FFC Global Admin if vendor escalation is needed.
Operational notes: Most legacy FFC sites live on InterServer DirectAdmin (IPs 192.64.86.202, 216.158.234.18). Newer sites have been migrated to Hostinger hPanel (IP 153.92.213.212). See the FFC sites list for the per-domain mapping.
Layer 2 — WordPress Installation: Softaculous
The foundation of the house.
Vendor: Softaculous (bundled with DirectAdmin / hPanel)
Responsibility: Automated WordPress install / upgrade / clone. Owns the wp-config.php, the database name, and the file ownership at install time.
Escalation path:
- Host vendor support for install-time errors.
- FFC Global Admin for charity-side reinstall / clone / staging copy.
Operational notes: Softaculous installs land in the host's WordPress staging slot. The FFC convention is one charity per cPanel/hPanel account so backups stay scoped.
Layer 3 — Plugins: WPMUDEV Suite
Essential utilities (electricity, water, HVAC).
Vendor: WPMUDEV
Responsibility: Security (Defender Pro), performance (Hummingbird, Smush Pro), backups (Snapshot Pro), migration tooling (Shipper Pro), and the WPMUDEV Dashboard plugin that ties everything together.
Escalation path:
- WPMUDEV in-product help and documentation.
- FFC Global Admin for hub-level account access.
Operational notes: WPMUDEV plugins ship admin tokens that trigger GitHub push-protection during Simply Static exports — see docs/ffc-simply-static-config.md for the plugin allowlist used at conversion time.
Layer 4 — Theme: Divi
Interior design.
Vendor: Elegant Themes
Responsibility: Page builder, theme styling, and per-site customization. Owns the visual layer the charity edits day-to-day.
Escalation path:
- Elegant Themes support for theme bugs and customization.
- FFC Global Admin for licence and customization-template questions.
Operational notes: Divi Builder ships its own cached CSS — clear Divi > Theme Options > Builder > Advanced > Static CSS before any Simply Static export.
Layer 5 — DNS and SSL: Cloudflare
The security system.
Vendor: Cloudflare
Responsibility: DNS authority, SSL certificate provisioning, WAF, and bulk-redirect rulesets. Connects the charity's domain to its origin server.
Escalation path:
- Cloudflare in-product diagnostics (Trace, Audit Log).
- FFC Global Admin for zone-level changes (registrar transfers, nameserver updates).
Operational notes: See docs/cloudflare-bulk-redirects-cutover.csv for the redirect set used during a static-site cutover.
Layer 6 — Email: Microsoft 365
The post office.
Vendor: Microsoft 365 (Tenant: freeforcharity.onmicrosoft.com)
Responsibility: Mailbox, calendar, and Teams services for FFC staff and partner-charity contacts. Separate trust boundary from the WordPress install — the WP server does not relay mail.
Escalation path:
- Microsoft 365 admin centre for tenant issues.
- FFC Global Admin for licence assignments and tenant-level requests.
Operational notes: M365 admin is one of the two Global Administrator tracks volunteers complete in the FFC contributor ladder — see /training-plan/.
Why this is “legacy”
Every charity site FFC builds today targets the GitHub Pages / Next.js static stack instead — no WordPress, no plugin sprawl, no monthly licence cost. The layered model above still applies (we still operate vendor-by-vendor), but the layers collapse to GitHub Pages + Cloudflare + Microsoft 365: hosting, DNS, and email. No Softaculous, no WPMUDEV, no Divi.
Read the WordPress-to-Next.js conversion guide for the migration playbook, and the current FFC tech stack for the modern equivalent of this page.