Today I migrated my site away from a bare bones server to a proper WordPress host.
There’s nothing quite like the hell of maintaining a server you rarely ever check on. Digging through docs, trying to recall all the previous incantations you recited to get the thing up last time.
This is a common issue with web developers. We build and maintain projects for others all day. The biggest decision point for any project, especially a personal one, is scope. Do I want my own website to be some complex piece of engineering that I am finally allowed to pursue? Or do I want something easy?
A long time ago I decided to go for something easy on the CMS side, but for some reason always had a bit of affection for the idea of maintaining and running a server. Updating software, implementing all the best practices, being able to tinker with every config. There was a time in my career where the maintenance and configuration was more fun to me than the actual project.
This morning I woke up and decided to check-in on this blog I’ve been neglecting, only to find that my SSL certificate had expired. Logging into the server, the program that manages these things tells me that it isn’t due for renewal for another couple of months.
Then a flicker of a memory, oh yeah, my configuration isn’t standard, I need to manually set up the certificate and copy it into the appropriate directories. I must have done this to get it working at some point, but my guess is that the automated renewal systems aren’t doing the same.
Google, google, google.
What am I doing?
Why am I trying to maintain this system any more? What is my time worth to me? What is this frustration worth?
So here we are. A nice new home, with a lot of nice new features that I simply no longer want to pursue myself, but am happy to outsource.