I maintain this website, and administer the computer on which it is hosted.
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This Website
This website was originally hosted on my home Internet
connection because, as a student, I didn't have the budget for a
better solution, and because as a computer science student I wanted
administrative access. Now that I'm working full time, I have more
options.
Even though I can afford a better solution, that doesn't mean I
want to spend the money it would take to buy and maintain a full
colo box. Instead, I decided to go with a VPS (virutal private
server) solution. Because my needs are still pretty modest, I can
make do with the cheapest plan at
Linode.com. It's easy to
upgrade to another plan, but at the moment everything I do fits
comfortably in one of those modest VMs.
Overall my cable modem was never that bad, but the one
overriding need that could never have been satisfied there
was the ability to host my own e-mail. Most cable modem
netblocks have been blacklisted, and there's just no way around
that.
Details
My VM is running Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. I chose this over Debian
because some of the packages I wanted to work with are more up to
date. While I could install them on Debian, I don't want to get
bogged down in manually managing things.
Design
I like a clean, simple look, and I don't have the
bandwidth for lots of graphics or animations. I used a
template called
simply
w+b from Open Source Web
Design. I know HTML, but this saved me a lot of time in
getting the aesthetics just right. I also don't want to worry
about compatibility with different browsers, and a simple
design is the best approach for that case.
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