Sysadmin
Tue, Oct 18, 2011I recently (mostly) finished a transition to a new server. I came from a free web host that was pretty good, but had some significant limitations (mainly in PHP, but also that I was limited to software they provided). Now I have my own VPS. I struggled a bit getting set up, but now I’m much better from it. To someone getting started on this kind of project anew as I did, here’s a few pieces of advice:
- Use an OS that has a package installer. SSH and SFTP are great, but they are only minimally convenient when it comes to installing lots of software. When you consider every little thing you’ll end up needing (which is a lot—my server didn’t even come with cURL installed), having an easy way to get all these little things is vital to your sanity.
- Consider the software you’re planning to use. Not doing this is a mistake I have yet to pay for. As I type this, I’m using Lighttpd as my webserver. Because I’d like to deploy an instance of [Diaspora*][2], I’m likely going to need to switch back to Apache or some more conventional server. The issue is Lighttpd will not allow some of the server to be on http and some of it to be on https. It’s all or nothing. I certainly would like parts of it to be on https, but not all of it should be. If I had known these things ahead of time, I could have prevented myself from duplicating a lot of work. On the other hand, I suppose these things must be trial and error for a while, unless you read every little detail beforehand.
- Set up a significant block of time to get your server up and/or make switching to your domain name one of the last things you do. For a while during the installation of various things (i.e. WordPress), the website, when visited, would display some confidential information. This is a problem. The suggestion here is that while these hiccups are difficult to avoid for a new sysadmin, minimizing the time and visibility of these issues can significantly mitigate the problem.
That’s it for now. Later to come: a step by step on how I now deploy parts of my site using git, because conventional knowledge didn’t seem to work for me and might not for you either.