You know those times where you need to ‘rip the bandaid off’ and just get something done? Well that was me over the last week, working on my current website move. Thank goodness it is now (nearly) complete!
Warning Ahead!
Warning! Technical Blog Ahead! Turn back now if you don’t want to fall too far into the weeds of tech speak. I have many more blog entries that talk about photography and studio stuff. This may be more up your alley! Just know that the site is back up, and you shouldn’t have any more problems viewing the site.
I was currently using ‘bluehost.com’, a well-known web hosting company to host my WordPress site. I liked their product, since it just seemed to work ‘out of the box’. Upon payment, they gave me most of what I needed to build my site. I didn’t need to do any of the ‘server’ work. All I needed to do was have a good understanding of how to build a WordPress site (which is something I ‘still’ need to get better at). I also liked that I could just call them and get technical support if there was an issue.
So what was the problem? I think that stems from the fact that I wanted more control of the inner-workings of the server. I am a system administrator during the day. I can manage this stuff! And ultimately, BlueHost was getting a little expensive. I felt that I could own most of their support model myself, and I could save a little money along the way.
So bring on Linode. I used Linode to create my own virtual server using some pretty cool YouTube videos. And then I worked on installing my own WordPress application. I backed up the site on BlueHost and Restored on Linode. And voila, after a little of trial and error (and a couple of down days – sorry guys) I got it working.
The cool thing about Linode is that I can always scale the server up to meet my needs. So if I get a flood of user activity, I can make very quick changes to meet user demand. And when activity is lower, I can scale the server back down. This is way better to me than a model where I pay a flat fee regardless of how much (or how little) user activity I am receiving in a given month. Photography tends to be more cyclical for me (with times getting busy around holidays and graduation). No need to pay more during the down times.
Let me know if you notice anything weird with the site. Or if you’re looking for someone to come in and help you set up a WordPress server, I’d love to help if i have the time!
Okay technical post complete. Back to photography!
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