commit 43d27d59dfa41fee65700013d46941f3ba0819e2 (patch)
parent a691e9ddbd6ca87637074ebaddcc6bc80a43401c
Author: Alex Karle <alex@alexkarle.com>
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2020 16:09:20 -0400
thoughts: Add post on migrating to self-hosting
I've been wanting to write this for a long time. For one, I wanted to
set the record straight that no, I was _NOT_ using Fastmail's "files"
GUI anymore (I mean... it worked, but it was painful and not
particularly technically impressive!)
And it felt like a necessary followup to the ramblings on domains. Yes,
I settled on alexkarle.com, and yes I've happily moved on to bigger and
better things (like self-hosted git repos! how awesome is that!)
I'd love to dive deeper into the topic, but I wanted to write at least
something so that my future self (AFAIK, the only reader) can look back
and say "wow! I remember those days"
Cheers
Diffstat:
2 files changed, 55 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/07-19-20-self-hosted.md b/content/07-19-20-self-hosted.md
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+<!-- {% include=head %} -->
+
+### July 17, 2020: Migrating to a Self-Hosted Site
+
+If you look at the [first post][1] on this site, you'll see that this site
+started as a series of static HTML files that I was, by hand, uploading to
+Fastmail via their "files" GUI.
+
+Being a total nerd for automation, I was always on the lookout for an excuse to
+migrate to my own server, where I could (over)engineer a pipeline to build my
+static content and deploy it without ever leaving the terminal.
+
+That excuse presented itself in the form of needing to get a VPS to stand up my
+hobby-project, [`euchre.live`][el]. If I was going to pay for a tiny VM, it was
+a no-brainer to move my personal site to it too.
+
+This turned out to be a great learning experience -- getting hands on experience
+with reverse proxies, DNS, and a variety of operating systems and webservers
+(first hosted on Alpine Linux and migrated to OpenBSD). Additionally, I could
+self-host git repos, which has long been a nerd-goal of mine :)
+
+I plan to write a lengthier post about the joys of self-hosting in the future,
+but for now, I really just wanted to give a brief update on where I landed and
+what the current stack is.
+
+I'm currently running (in no particular order):
+
+* **OS:** OpenBSD
+* **Web server:** OpenBSD's `httpd(8)`
+ - Serves the `www.` static content
+ - Also serves [git.alexkarle.com][git]
+* **Reverse proxy:** OpenBSD's `relayd(8)`
+ - Used to send traffic between [`euchre.live`][el] (which uses a [Mojolicious][mojo]
+ web server as the backend) and `alexkarle.com` based on URL
+* **`www` content:**
+ - 100% static content
+ - No metrics, ads, or tracking
+ - Posts and pages written in markdown
+ - HTML generated with a pipeline of the original `Markdown.pl` into a small
+ templating Perl script that I home-rolled
+* **Git:**
+ - Public repos served with `git-daemon(1)` over the `git://` protocol
+ - Push access via the `ssh://` protocol
+ - static HTML of content generated via post-receive hook with [stagit][stagit]
+
+That's all for now!
+
+[1]: 12-19-19-a-new-hope.html
+[el]: http://euchre.live
+[git]: https://git.alexkarle.com
+[stagit]: https://git.codemadness.org/stagit/
+[mojo]: https://mojolicious.org
+
+<!-- {% include=post-tail %} -->
diff --git a/content/thoughts.md b/content/thoughts.md
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
<p style="color:grey">(Because I couldn't commit to calling it a blog)</p>
+* [Jul. 17, 2020: Migrating to a Self-Hosted Site](07-19-20-self-hosted.html)
* [Jul. 13, 2020: Black Lives Matter](07-13-20-blm.html)
* [Mar. 24, 2020: What's in a (domain) name?](03-24-20-domain-name.html)
* [Dec. 19, 2019: A New Hope](12-19-19-a-new-hope.html)
