Ideas abounded when I started this blog. I was looking forward to writing. I’d put a lot of time into setting up the website, but months after it was working I’d yet to write one substantive thing. I’d been on sabbatical so time wasn’t the issue; the motivation to blog had just melted away. I’ve been through similar cycles with other hobbies like retro computing so I’m not too surprised. Sometimes I love the setup more than the practice.
I love setting up things! One learns so much and it feels satisfying to make them work. But actually using them isn’t always as appealing as expected. In my blog’s case, I hadn’t given it a chance. Given my love for setting things up, it seemed fitting to write about setting up the blog. This isn’t a how-to guide, it’s more of a “thrilling” tale of my adventures in webops.
If one wants a blog in a jiffy there are platforms that will host you without hassle, possibly for a fee. It’s probably the best choice for most people, especially for the non-technical. But I’ve always preferred to run my own my web stuff. There are practical reasons but it’s mostly because making Linux do neat things sends me to my happy place.
I had to nail down two variables before actually doing anything: a networked computer and a blog platform. Once upon a time in the early web days, I’d run raccoony.com on a cute Linux box in my garage. Sadly, I experienced more than my share of hardware failures and it’s soured my appetite to try this again. My career is designing computer hardware, but sometimes the gadgets don’t like me.
Cloud computing presents a compelling alternative to running one’s own server hardware. Renting an instance on a cloud computing platform is super cheap and I’ll never have to deal with another corrupted disk array, busted RAID controller, dead disk, buggy PC card, or flaky internet connection. Even soft errors will be reduced!2 The cloud infrastructure is inherently networked and it can handle backups and other administrative tasks, too. I could stick the blog on the same AWS Linux instance that hosts my webcomic (raccoony.com) so there’s no additional cost for cloud computing services.
As for a blogging platform, there are several viable choices. WordPress seemed like the best option due to its huge user base and reputation for a simple install process. Installing it was mostly easy, but it needs a working web server and database service, this article helped me out here. Once it was set up you can login to the blog’s admin panel to configure and start using it.
Before going live, I had to complete a serious side quest: mitigating security vulnerabilities. It’s no surprise that WordPress, the most popular blogging platform, is also the most attacked. There are guides to hardening both WordPress and webservers in general so I read up on what I could. I settled on simple, reasonable precautions like making the admin panel accessible only from my IP, and only when I want to use it. This isn’t overkill; hackers exist and they can do bad things. If you run a website, you can check your webserver logs where you’ll see tons of bots, mostly from foreign countries, trying to connect to popular hacking vectors like the WordPress login portal. It’s safest if these special doors simply don’t exist to the general public. One must also protect their domain registrar and cloud computing accounts with multifactor authentication. It’s a jungle out there.
In retrospect the setup process seems easier than it actually was. Things often seem easier in hindsight but there were a few difficult areas that stood out. Managing the SSL/TLS certificates that enable modern web security was the biggest hiccup. A manual certificate installation process is annoying and error-prone. Even automated management with tools like certbot and letsencrypt isn’t without glitches, but this is really the way to go since the powers that be dictate that the maximum validity period for certificates will go down to only 47 days by 2029. No matter which way you manage your certificates, the webserver configuration is super finicky, or so it appears to a casual user like me.
Another thing that took longer than it should’ve was picking a domain name. Finding a name that’s cool, memorable, apt, and available was tough, lol. That’s what I got, foxes.lol.
And here we are, my first real blog entry is posted. Thanks for reading! Blog setup may not be the most exciting topic but I needed to start somewhere and starting really is the hardest part. It was also a good excuse to draw my ‘sona (Leaf) LOLing. Next time I’ll write about something completely different. 🙂
- Some of my old art is signed as “Jeff-kun”, my old otter fursona from the early 2000s. Before that I had a raccoon fursona in the 90s. ↩︎
- Anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that my mountaintop environment experiences more disruptive high-energy particles than a typical data center. Increased soft error rate (SER) is a well-known effect at high altitude but the presence of naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes may also exacerbate it. These compounds are common in granite mountains like the Sierra Nevada. ↩︎