Back in Business!
Ok, I’m back.
The delay was caused by equal parts server wonkiness and wishy-washiness on my part.
About two weeks ago, my server (specs in the first posting below) kept locking up randomly, which caused me to start trying to troubleshoot the problem. Which is almost never a good thing. I upgraded it from OS X Jaguar (10.2.8) to Panther (10.3.5) in the hopes that it would help fix things, as well as to allow me to run a better version of PHP (i.e., compiled with more modules available), and Apache 2.0. This, sadly, did not fix the random freezes (I think something might be wrong on the motherboard, but I’m still working on tracking that down…).
At the same time, I was able to pick up a used Dell G1 P3-450 w/128MB RAM & 6GB HD for $15. So, I figured I’d turn that into a dedicated server running some flavor of Linux. As I researched which distro, I then thought it might be fun to also have it be my gateway/router, as well as my server, so that it could be the single point of public presence for me, thus giving me a little more flexibility & security in running my main Linux box (now running Ubuntu Linux 4.10 — highly recommended!) without having to worry about messing it up and/or taking it down, along with affording me a bit of flexibility in tracking down the problems on/in my G4.
So, I tracked down a great gateway/router/server distro — ClarkConnect 2.2 Home Edition — which was free, and very user-friendly/easy to manage. I also decided to register my own domain (gpiper.org) so that I could have some stability & predictability in the name of my server & blog. A nice thing about ClarkConnect is that it has dynamic DNS updating built-in, so I now don’t have to worry about running any other apps to do that housekeeping. For domain registration, I found GoDaddy.com to be very good — reasonably priced & very easy to work with. For DNS I first went with DNSMadeEasy.com (great price & great service), but then switched over to ClarkConnect/PointClark, in spite of the added cost, just because it integrated so easily with my gateway/router setup.
Then, it was almost predictable that I got the bug to check out another CMS/Blog software solution — you’ll now note that I’m still running this blog on WordPress, the same as I was back when I started it… I gave serious thought to b2evolution, which (along with WordPress) is a fork off of the b2/cafelog project. b2evo is a very nice environment, with some significant differences from WP — some features are better, some worse. For whatever reason, though, I just couldn’t get as comfortable with b2evo as I did/am with WP. Something that really helped my decision/thought process was a great blog software comparison chart/worksheet & blog entry, graciously made available by Owen Winkler. He, like a lot of folks out there I’ve found, chose WP over b2evo, and his process really helped me work through what I want to do in a blog, and what I want in the software that helps me produce the blog. A great site & a great service!
So, the end result is this — I’m now back in blogness, and I plan on not futzing around with my server & blog software setup any more (for the near future anyway…). I’m going to try and focus primarily on content, and secondarily on learning the ins & outs of WP so that I can customize things to my taste.
As always, please feel free to comment, and let me know what you’re thinking (note the bold assumption that someone/anyone will actually read this… ;^) ).
-ghp
-
Analytics & Hosting
