website soon
Sun Jul 17 02:30:21 EDT 2016
Since Comcast dropped their "Personal Web Pages" I've had no personal website. I'd put large numbers of photos on a couple of free websites, but the former (netsnapshot) went defunct and the latter (atpic) lost my photos repeatedly. Hosting them on Comcast would have been the simple solution, but they provided only 1GB of space. (Actually, 7GB of space, but in 7 separate accounts.) Hosting services vary a lot (cost and quality, and no strong correlation). So I've been planning to host my content myself on an old laptop with a bad screen and dead trackpad - i.e. not a great machine for physical human interfacing.
Tonight I finally installed NGINX (High-Performance Load-Balancer, Web Server, & Reverse Proxy) on the laptop and copied the old website from my laptop. It needs some clean-up, and there's a lot of pages that haven't been updated for years, but it's working. I can point a browser at the laptop's IP and I get my old website.
Now I need to buy a domain. ".us" domains are a little cheaper than .net and .org, but today I noticed ".one" for about half the price. There's a lot of cute "one" puns to make with those domain names (the.one, know.one, three.two.one, etc), but I'll probably just stick with my name. (Or maybe "recumbrent"....) If I start using a .one domain for email it might be beyond the realms of the spammers who take common names and guess at email addresses (as opposed to the spammers who harvest addresses from other email and address books - although they might reject whatever.one as unreasonable, so another bonus).
And I have to set up Dynamic DNS. I've found a couple of free servers for that that look good. Put the laptop at a permanent IP. Put that IP in the WiFi router's DMZ and direct web traffic to it. Set up the router to update the DDNS service. These all look pretty manageable.
I don't know how fast data will go outbound through my ISP, so my site may be slow. I'm not expecting the laptop to be the slowest player.
Another thing I was doing on my personal website was hosting thousands of icons that were available for blog postings. Those are all broken now in DreamWidth and LiveJournal. I'll have them available again, but I don't know that I'll go back to fix all the old postings. (But having my own domain should mean not needing to do another fix in the future.) Even if it's slow, it shouldn't be bad for a 100x100 icon.
And I've missed having my photos available to include in journal entries.
Sunday 03:30
Most home networks have an IP address that is provided by the ISP, and is not permanent. (Some ISPs will give you a fixed IP address, and most that do will charge extra for it.) Dynamic DNS gets around this problem by updating your IP in the Internet name service. This requires (1) registering a domain name, (2) telling your domain registrar who your nameservers are, and (3) keeping your domain's IP updated at the nameservers.
My WiFi router (SMC 2804WBRP-G) supports updating the nameserver, but only for 2 providers - DynDNS.org and TZO.com, both of which appear to actually be dyn.com, which charges $40/year for "pro" DNS and $60/year for "standard". The router is the best device to have updating the nameservers, since it knows immediately when the ISP changes its IP. But $40/yr for something I can get free? No.
I'll have to go with running software on the webserver to update the nameservice.
Sunday 19:02
The terms of service for registering a domain are amazingly long....
Sunday 23:38
This phrase turns up over and over:"You agree that, if You do not agree to ..., You may terminate this Agreement without refund or credit to You of any fees paid by You to Dynadot."
Pretty much for any problem or dispute, you can leave but we keep the money. The saving grace is that this domain is $6/year, so it's not worth fighting over. This discourages doing a multi-year registration, though - 10-year registrations in .game or .sucks are thousands of dollars. (The plus side of a multi-year registration is locking in the current price, assuming prices will rise; some could fall though, and you'd have overpaid.)
I just noticed that renewals of the .one domains are more expensive than .us. Given that I want permanence, I guess I'm back to .us. You've really got to watch those renewal charges! It's possible I won't be doing this at all in 10 years, and 10 years at the cheap intro price would be the best deal. But going year-by-year means not losing as much if I find I don't like this registrar.
DomainPurchaseRenewRequires
syntonic.top$1.00$8.99
syntonic.website$1.99$24.99
syntonic.xyz$1.99$12.99
syntonic.pro$3.99$19.99
syntonic.info$4.99$10.99
syntonic.online$4.99$39.99
syntonic.in$5.99$7.50
syntonic.mobi$5.99$14.99
syntonic.one$5.99$10.99
syntonic.tech$6.99$49.99
syntonic.name$8.50$8.50
syntonic.co.uk$8.99Admin in UK
syntonic.live$8.99
syntonic.me$8.99
syntonic.win$8.99
syntonic.ws$8.99
syntonic.uk$8.99Admin in UK
syntonic.us$8.99US Presence
syntonic.click$9.99
syntonic.cloud$9.99
syntonic.vip$9.99
syntonic.cc$10.99
syntonic.com$10.99
syntonic.net$10.99
syntonic.biz$11.99
syntonic.org$11.99
syntonic.ca$11.99Canadian Presence
syntonic.co$12.99
syntonic.club$14.99
syntonic.red$14.99
syntonic.rocks$14.99
syntonic.store$14.99
syntonic.bet$15.99
syntonic.moe$19.99
syntonic.group$22.99
syntonic.news$24.99
syntonic.tv$24.99
syntonic.la$29.99
syntonic.vc$38.99
syntonic.vin$42.99
syntonic.wine$42.99
syntonic.press$64.99
syntonic.global$69.99
syntonic.adult$84.99
syntonic.porn$84.99
syntonic.sex$84.99
syntonic.xxx$84.99
.name's even cheaper - and .in (India) is cheaper yet, but not really appropriate.
Monday 01:21
I've just bought a domain.
Tuesday 00:13
I got the website working Sunday night/Monday morning.
I can load pages from my domain at my office. The response is fast. I don't expect good performance if there's a load of traffic - but I don't expect much traffic.
There's still a lot that needs to be done for the website.
When I started collecting icons, I put them in a directory named "lj". It matched what I was doing with them, but they could be used anywhere. And now that I'm more focused on Dreamwidth than LiveJournal, the name isn't so appropriate. Since all the links in the journals are broken anyway, this would be a good time to rename "lj" to "icons". That's what they (mostly) are. It would be nice to split them up into smaller groups, because 3000 items in a directory isn't really manageable. But that would just make them hard to find. Categories don't work because many images are useful several places. JPG/PNG is an arbitrary distinction, and many images have been moved from one to the other (e.g. wanting clear backgrounds for JPGs). A few are bigger than LJ's 100x100 size limit, but they still get used like icons, sprinkled into postings.
Tuesday 13:34
I got some email from the DNS provider (Zonomi). The trial period is limited; it goes another 5 days. I have to "activate" my account or I will lose the DNS service. It is still free if I stay below some number of domains and DNS records. (I think that will be manageable, since I have only 1 domain.)
Thursday 12:54
I got another reminder from Zonomi. I activated my account. The DNS service for my lone domain is free.
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/824109.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]
Since Comcast dropped their "Personal Web Pages" I've had no personal website. I'd put large numbers of photos on a couple of free websites, but the former (netsnapshot) went defunct and the latter (atpic) lost my photos repeatedly. Hosting them on Comcast would have been the simple solution, but they provided only 1GB of space. (Actually, 7GB of space, but in 7 separate accounts.) Hosting services vary a lot (cost and quality, and no strong correlation). So I've been planning to host my content myself on an old laptop with a bad screen and dead trackpad - i.e. not a great machine for physical human interfacing.
Tonight I finally installed NGINX (High-Performance Load-Balancer, Web Server, & Reverse Proxy) on the laptop and copied the old website from my laptop. It needs some clean-up, and there's a lot of pages that haven't been updated for years, but it's working. I can point a browser at the laptop's IP and I get my old website.
Now I need to buy a domain. ".us" domains are a little cheaper than .net and .org, but today I noticed ".one" for about half the price. There's a lot of cute "one" puns to make with those domain names (the.one, know.one, three.two.one, etc), but I'll probably just stick with my name. (Or maybe "recumbrent"....) If I start using a .one domain for email it might be beyond the realms of the spammers who take common names and guess at email addresses (as opposed to the spammers who harvest addresses from other email and address books - although they might reject whatever.one as unreasonable, so another bonus).
And I have to set up Dynamic DNS. I've found a couple of free servers for that that look good. Put the laptop at a permanent IP. Put that IP in the WiFi router's DMZ and direct web traffic to it. Set up the router to update the DDNS service. These all look pretty manageable.
I don't know how fast data will go outbound through my ISP, so my site may be slow. I'm not expecting the laptop to be the slowest player.
Another thing I was doing on my personal website was hosting thousands of icons that were available for blog postings. Those are all broken now in DreamWidth and LiveJournal. I'll have them available again, but I don't know that I'll go back to fix all the old postings. (But having my own domain should mean not needing to do another fix in the future.) Even if it's slow, it shouldn't be bad for a 100x100 icon.
And I've missed having my photos available to include in journal entries.
Sunday 03:30
Most home networks have an IP address that is provided by the ISP, and is not permanent. (Some ISPs will give you a fixed IP address, and most that do will charge extra for it.) Dynamic DNS gets around this problem by updating your IP in the Internet name service. This requires (1) registering a domain name, (2) telling your domain registrar who your nameservers are, and (3) keeping your domain's IP updated at the nameservers.
My WiFi router (SMC 2804WBRP-G) supports updating the nameserver, but only for 2 providers - DynDNS.org and TZO.com, both of which appear to actually be dyn.com, which charges $40/year for "pro" DNS and $60/year for "standard". The router is the best device to have updating the nameservers, since it knows immediately when the ISP changes its IP. But $40/yr for something I can get free? No.
I'll have to go with running software on the webserver to update the nameservice.
Sunday 19:02
The terms of service for registering a domain are amazingly long....
Sunday 23:38
This phrase turns up over and over:"You agree that, if You do not agree to ..., You may terminate this Agreement without refund or credit to You of any fees paid by You to Dynadot."
Pretty much for any problem or dispute, you can leave but we keep the money. The saving grace is that this domain is $6/year, so it's not worth fighting over. This discourages doing a multi-year registration, though - 10-year registrations in .game or .sucks are thousands of dollars. (The plus side of a multi-year registration is locking in the current price, assuming prices will rise; some could fall though, and you'd have overpaid.)
I just noticed that renewals of the .one domains are more expensive than .us. Given that I want permanence, I guess I'm back to .us. You've really got to watch those renewal charges! It's possible I won't be doing this at all in 10 years, and 10 years at the cheap intro price would be the best deal. But going year-by-year means not losing as much if I find I don't like this registrar.
DomainPurchaseRenewRequires
syntonic.top$1.00$8.99
syntonic.website$1.99$24.99
syntonic.xyz$1.99$12.99
syntonic.pro$3.99$19.99
syntonic.info$4.99$10.99
syntonic.online$4.99$39.99
syntonic.in$5.99$7.50
syntonic.mobi$5.99$14.99
syntonic.one$5.99$10.99
syntonic.tech$6.99$49.99
syntonic.name$8.50$8.50
syntonic.co.uk$8.99Admin in UK
syntonic.live$8.99
syntonic.me$8.99
syntonic.win$8.99
syntonic.ws$8.99
syntonic.uk$8.99Admin in UK
syntonic.us$8.99US Presence
syntonic.click$9.99
syntonic.cloud$9.99
syntonic.vip$9.99
syntonic.cc$10.99
syntonic.com$10.99
syntonic.net$10.99
syntonic.biz$11.99
syntonic.org$11.99
syntonic.ca$11.99Canadian Presence
syntonic.co$12.99
syntonic.club$14.99
syntonic.red$14.99
syntonic.rocks$14.99
syntonic.store$14.99
syntonic.bet$15.99
syntonic.moe$19.99
syntonic.group$22.99
syntonic.news$24.99
syntonic.tv$24.99
syntonic.la$29.99
syntonic.vc$38.99
syntonic.vin$42.99
syntonic.wine$42.99
syntonic.press$64.99
syntonic.global$69.99
syntonic.adult$84.99
syntonic.porn$84.99
syntonic.sex$84.99
syntonic.xxx$84.99
.name's even cheaper - and .in (India) is cheaper yet, but not really appropriate.
Monday 01:21
I've just bought a domain.
Tuesday 00:13
I got the website working Sunday night/Monday morning.
I can load pages from my domain at my office. The response is fast. I don't expect good performance if there's a load of traffic - but I don't expect much traffic.
There's still a lot that needs to be done for the website.
- The server/laptop itself needs to have a fixed IP address on my internal LAN, so it doesn't drop out of the "DMZ" (and so nothing else drops into the DMZ).
- The server should be moved from WiFi to Ethernet. The wireless connection isn't as reliable (interference from cordless phones, microwave ovens, etc), and once lost, it rarely reconnects on its own. I don't want the site down until I come home from work (or from out of town) - assuming I notice it's gone.
- The server needs something installed to update the Dynamic DNS service, because Comcast could change my router's IP at any time.
- I'm not sure I'm going to stick with this DDNS service. They say they have free service, but from the setup process it looks like a trial period. Is it an indefinite trial, or do I need to find a service that really is free?
- The site content itself is very stale.
- There are lots of photos that need metadata.
- There are audio files to sort through too; .WAVs to edit/split and organize into .MP3s....
- I suppose at some point the search engines will pick me up again.
When I started collecting icons, I put them in a directory named "lj". It matched what I was doing with them, but they could be used anywhere. And now that I'm more focused on Dreamwidth than LiveJournal, the name isn't so appropriate. Since all the links in the journals are broken anyway, this would be a good time to rename "lj" to "icons". That's what they (mostly) are. It would be nice to split them up into smaller groups, because 3000 items in a directory isn't really manageable. But that would just make them hard to find. Categories don't work because many images are useful several places. JPG/PNG is an arbitrary distinction, and many images have been moved from one to the other (e.g. wanting clear backgrounds for JPGs). A few are bigger than LJ's 100x100 size limit, but they still get used like icons, sprinkled into postings.
Tuesday 13:34
I got some email from the DNS provider (Zonomi). The trial period is limited; it goes another 5 days. I have to "activate" my account or I will lose the DNS service. It is still free if I stay below some number of domains and DNS records. (I think that will be manageable, since I have only 1 domain.)
Thursday 12:54
I got another reminder from Zonomi. I activated my account. The DNS service for my lone domain is free.
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/824109.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]