Fair enough. This is hackernews. I've passed the link to this comment thread along to the writer and we'll slowly educate the client base, one at a time.
Thanks for all the comments everyone. I was the editor who commissioned the piece. To give some context the writer had about 12 days to write the article. An impartial observer (not me obviously) might get the impression that the people offering up advice here might need to take themselves a little less seriously. Have a lovely day and thanks for reading and commenting.
To answer the title, I think I'd have a much better idea after I lurked in a class first. Once I've experienced how it works I'd be able to make a more informed decision.
The site is up now. On my own Wordpress installs I usually run SuperCache but it interferes with some of the custom hacking I've done on this template.