Blogging

Now that the blog is set up and running, lets have a look at some deeper / more advanced configurations. We’ll cover: Automated software updates Website address redirections Advanced e-mail sending Server-side SSL settings Automatic updates Since we’re not needing to connect to the back-end of the server in normal usage of the blog, it’s a good idea to configure automatic updates. Security It’s only a matter of time until a security flaw is found and then patched. By installing security updates as soon as they’re available we’ll be staying as secure as possible from all future flaws. ...

Now that my, new, Lightsail server is up and running, it’s time to put it to good use, by installing the Ghost publishing (blogging) platform. This guide is adapted from the Ghost documentation. For simplicity Ghost has only one recommended stack (server configuration), which I’ve chosen to implement: Ubuntu long term support (LTS) 16.04LTS or 18.04LTS (as at 2018) as the operating system MySQL as the database nginx (minimum version 1.9.5 for SSL) as the webserver systemd Node (Recommended version installed via NodeSource) for server-side scripting A server with at least 1GiB memory (RAM + swap) A (non-root) user for running Ghost command line interface (CLI) commands a (non-root) user: [user] Which we’ll use to run all our commands. ...

So it’s been a while since I’ve done any blogging… I have also recently come across ghost, which brands itself as: “…a proud non-profit organisation building open source technology for journalism " This concept aligns to my own personal values by being simple and focused. It also matches nicely with what I’m trying to achieve with this blog, which is to write blog posts. The icing on the cake is a dedicated android-based editing and publishing app that enables blog post writing on the go. ...

A quick guide on installing WordPress on an Ubuntu server. Begin by downloading the latest WordPress image to the home directory. $ cd ~ $ wget -c http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz Extract the image $ tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz Copy the extracted files to the root website folder $ sudo rsync -av wordpress/* /var/www/html/ Setup permissions $ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/ $ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/ Setup the default database for the WordPress server to use ...

So I’ve decided to take the plunge into the world of blogging and website hosting. My initial motivation to venture into this world is to have a nice format to publish reviews of books I read. My secondary motivation being to learn the details associated with setting up and hosting websites. An initial search of website options led me to WordPress as the best option for a self-hosted website, and a fee other options for non-self-hosted websites (e.g. Blogger, Squarespace, WordPress.com). Seeing the benefit in learning the nuts and bolts that sit behind the website, I decided to go down the, self-hosted, WordPress path. ...