I first started registering domain names and using shared hosting in 2000 after graduating from college. In 2005, I decided it was worth paying the extra money for a VPS Server – both to gain root access and to get off of shared hosting. Honestly, I mostly did it for the learning experience which I have never regretted even though none of my websites have ever really taken off (that is, I’ve never needed the extra server resources)!
Any time that I’ve looked into cloud hosting, it looked like the monthly cost would be multiples of what I was already paying to host unlimited websites on my VPS Server. Earlier this year, I signed up for two free cloud hosting options as a way to try them out and to test my cost theory. Appears that I was correct in my assumptions and was left again balking at the cost of switching to cloud hosting. Closed off those two accounts and looked again at my hosting needs and whether or not my VPS Server was going to be enough for me to put the tools to use that I need (npm, composer, Laravel, PHP 8, and git with the ability to set the default branch and githooks directory).
Back to 2000 when web development (and everything about the Internet) was much simpler. I happily used DreamWeaver until about 5 years ago when the simplicity in web development became a more complicated process that now involves build steps. I chose web development (over desktop applications) in college because it was so much simpler and did not involve a build step. When I wanted to save my changes, I hit CTRL+S in DreamWeaver and not only did it save to disk, it would also FTP the changes to my web server!
I’m sure anyone doing modern web development with a full development pipeline is probably recoiling at the thought while clutching their pearls! But, you have to understand, these tools of today didn’t exist back then. I can remember writing WSH (Windows Scripting Host) scripts with our Network Engineer to create a code deployment pipeline with backup and rollback features.
A Whole New World
After working in IT, IMIT, and IS departments “In The Enterprise” (aka: Windows) for 11 years, I’d had enough and was ready for a change. In 2011, I left the corporate tech world but have since worked on contracts and have always worked on my own side projects. During that time, I also managed a Health and Wellness center, took a bunch of courses, and did a lot of much needed healing.
Around 2016, I heard that the tech industry was “booming” but “lacked talent” so I came back – but to an industry using different language than it used to (which I find more confusing and vague) and a totally new way of getting your projects into production, including a build process.
At that time, my VPS Server did not support a lot of what I needed (namely PHP 7 and git 2.x) and made me wait a number of years for those features to become available in CPanel. I find the dichotomy between then and now in how we handle new tech to be amazing (waiting vs immediate upgrades) – but that’s another post.
Usually when you migrate from server to server, you can use some sort of migration tool for it to do the work for you (but this hasn’t always been the case). I don’t know how many times my projects have now migrated webhosts and servers since 2000, including between different underlying OS’s that differ in how and where the configurations are done.
While migration tools made moving servers easier, it also meant a lot of kludges were done along the way by my hosting companies to get my projects to work in their environment. As someone who prefers cleanliness and doing things right the first time to quick fixes and kludges, I’ve felt my server has been a bit messy for a number of years now.
Migrating Migraines
I have never been a fan of migrating because this also migrates any underlying issues that may exist or become a problem in the future. I prefer instead to rebuild the server from scratch. Knowing that this was how I wanted to undertake moving away from my legacy VPS server, I have been procrastinating because I’m a coder at heart and just want to write code.
I plan to create new nameservers and use a new server name to bring it inline with my Smurf Village infrastrucutre theme. There is an added benefit with creating new nameservers that will in my opinion, make it easier to move these websites over to the new server.
I have until October 5th at midnight to get two WordPress websites back onto my servers from the free web hosting I won almost a year ago. Which means, I need to get in contact with my hosting provider this week to get the process started.
Coming Up Next
Taking inventory of my current projects, settings, and going thru old support requests to see what all needs to be submitted as new support requests once the new server is provisioned.