I spent the last few days messing with servers on Kamatera’s VPS hosting. After abandoning the attempt to set up an Epicyon fediverse instance, I tried to re-utilize the same server for the blog and photo galleries. I’d chosen a NGINX based server, and somehow I couldn’t succeed with it, so eventually I gave up.
Next, I tried a Caddy server image offered by Kamatera. I didn’t manage with that one either; though Caddy is supposed to be really easy, I couldn’t get through the set-up. It might have been easier simply to take a plain server and to install Caddy myself.
Eventually, I chose a server image based on Ubuntu with Apache and PHP pre-installed – a configuration that I understand best. But, as I was quickly to discover, these server-related components weren’t fully present on Kamatera’s image. At least, they weren’t working. First I found that A2ensite wasn’t there, then that PHP wasn’t functioning, so basically I needed to install or reinstall all of the server bits.
After a few hours, I got it all set up again, including the emacs org-mode based blog and galleries. Now, as before, publishing a blog post only requires me to compose it, press Alt-X and type “pub”: that rsyncs everything including the posts and any media I’ve placed in the local directories to the website. That’s about as easy and painless as you can get – and it automatically provides me with a full local backup. The only actual disadvantage is not being able to publish something directly from a phone. It’s no doubt possible, with an ssh app and a bit of configuration, to publish photos over Android to the server, but not blog posts, due to the dependence on emacs. What I can do, is draft posts on my phone, using Orgzly, and then transfer them to my computer.
I think I’ll leave it basically at that, rather than risk being over-ambitious and spoiling my configuration again. There’s only so many times that one can go through the process of reinstalling a server and setting everything up without being driven to a place of “what’s the point?”
For social media crossposting, I’ll depend on Disroot’s Pleroma server and Twitter. But for that to be significant I would have to build up a follower base again, and I lack the energy and self-confidence needed for that.
From my photo blog, the view from YS’s apartment in Jerusalem.