Server Move
I have just spent the last few days working out how to move my server. If you haven’t noticed any difference, then that’s good. However, if you notice some issues then please drop a comment and tell me, so I can fix it ASAP.
It’s been quite stressful. I haven’t done any real sys-admin work for more than a decade, and there’s always a worry that I’ve forgotten something. But at the moment, all seems good.
That wasn’t the case at about midday, when I had a blank site and no idea what was causing it. So if you encountered that during a recent visit, I’m sorry.
I’ve been wanting to move from my former host for something like five years. I first moved there when we relocated to Singapore. A friend recommended them, and everything was good for a few years. Then the admins began making tweaks to their code that disrupted my site. Then they tweaked my actual site, knocking it offline. I had made some alterations to the code to improve it, but their tweaks messed it right up. Unfortunately, at that time I was simply too sick to deal with it. I left it that way for more than a year, until I was well enough to figure out the problem and fix it. Which I did.
It still took another few years for them to grind me down and drive me to leave. It wasn’t one specific thing that did it. It was a multitude of tiny things. Basically, I didn’t trust them anymore, and yet I still didn’t leave.Set a goal and head straight for it.
I knew it would be an almighty effort to move not just my site (several, actually), but also the other associated components (mail accounts, DNS, etc). And who should I trust with my treasure trove? There are lots of vendors offering similar services, but nothing exactly to what I wanted. I thought about it long and hard, but ultimately I just delayed.
Then I got involved in the Fediverse, and part of the transfer involved the desire to federate my blog. Except, my host blocked the ActivityPub plugin. It technically worked, but nobody could follow the blog.
Then a few weeks ago, my former host began spamming me with upsell emails. I’d had enough and I realised I couldn’t put it off any longer. I needed to make the move, and began a proper search. I set myself a deadline to find a good vendor. And I found quite a few, but they were all far too expensive for what I wanted, or they lacked this feature or that feature. Ultimately, I chose to do it all myself. I got myself a VPS and installed and configure it myself.
It was just like in the days when I had permanent dial-up and ran my sites (and a bunch of other stuff) on a Linux box cobbled together from spare parts. Those were the days!
But I do worry, as I said at the start, that I’ve forgotten something important. Perhaps that’s just paranoia.
For now, lets hope it’s okay.
