Hosting My Own Blog

Welcome to my blog! This isn't some slick, enterprise-level setup with 99.999% uptime– it's more of a playground for my thoughts and experiments. There are no service level agreements or metrics to worry about here. If the site goes down for a few days while I try out something new, that's all part of the fun.

The main reason I didn't go with platforms like Medium or Tumblr is because I want complete and utter control over my site, free from the limitations and rules set by big tech companies. Especially in a world where the web is increasingly dominated by a handful of technology giants, decentralizing and taking back some control feels important to me.

Plus, self-hosting means I have a say in how my content is used, especially when it comes to AI. Not too much around the scraping (for the most part) since they'd rather steal and ask for forgiveness, but in terms of the platform I choose partnering with an AI company to sell everything you created.

This is NOT production

Again, one thing you need to keep in mind is that this is a playground for my thoughts, not an enterprise environment. So, I'm not looking for 99.999% uptime. I also like to document things I encounter when I self-host. There's no SLA (service level agreement), MTTA (mean time to acknowledge), etc., for this site. It doesn't provide cash flow, so I treat it as such. It's really a playground for learning, and I'll take the site down for a couple of days if I need to for learning something new.

Ownership

One of the biggest problems I had with going the route of Medium or Tumblr is ownership. Complete and utter control over my site. With other platforms, I'm limited to what they can offer me and the rules they set. But if I host myself, my limit is my capability, and my capability will grow as I learn new ways to host.

We are all aware of the consolidation of the web to just a handful of technology companies. I would love to watch some of my favorite YouTubers on other platforms other than YouTube; however, many of them only offer their videos on one platform – even in paid form. I just can't add my personal blog to yet another big technology company. We really do need to decentralize the web a bit more. Nothing is wrong with the features, support, and capabilities these platforms provide; but there's not much I can see them offering me for HTML/CSS/JS.

Control

Another thing that pushed me towards hosting this myself is what I experience when I created YouTube videos. I created videos mostly focused on cybersecurity. As YouTube policy changed, they would sometimes strike my videos that would go over the things I learned about in class. Nothing I posted attacked anyone or even showed anyone how to hack into some company, just small scale and concept stuff.

The last straw was when they struck a video I made around how basic DoS (Denial of Service) and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) worked using hping3—a tool we used in class. In the video I tell people not to use it for malicious use and that it is a tool for learning. Furthermore, it's an old tool... and not a very powerful tool, so it's great for testing on your local LAN. In other words, you're not taking down a mid-large scale company with large amounts of ping traffic with your home upload speed. And even if you did... it is coming from your IP address... not hard to track down.

Anywho, they struck the video twice. Once, maybe a year or so after I uploaded. I then disputed the strike and explained that it was a video to teach and that using the tool would be useless these days with Internet connections. They then struck it again a couple years later and at that point refused my same explanation. That's when I gave up, I had no interest in playing the politics game of a platform that could arbitrarily change their policy and remove you. My videos were purely educational, and although they generated some income, it wasn't significant, so I didn't mind losing it.

AI

Not my number one priority. AI will continue to be used by big technology platforms to learn from the content you post online and then resell your knowledge/experience – removing the need for people to come to you – your site. Nevertheless, because I control my site, I have a little more say in how I allow content to be used. That is, if I went with Tumblr, they could just say they're going to partner with an AI company to allow them to sell everything, and there's nothing I can do about it.

And yeah, you will see some AI art used for some of my articles. If I can't find something I like in Unsplash, then I will generate it.

Security and Backup

I've implemented various security measures to protect my site. For example, I'm using a software RAID setup with two drives for drive redundancy, along with MinIO, which provides S3 compatible backups that Longhorn can use. I also have an NFS (Network File System) setup for flat file backups.

The server itself is located miles away in someone else's basement, and network access is handled by Tailscale, a zero-trust networking solution that allows me to securely connect to the server from anywhere.

What I've Learned

Throughout this process, I've learned several valuable lessons. Firstly, self-hosting can be more cost-effective than using cloud services, especially if you're just starting out. Secondly, it's essential to have a solid understanding of security and backup procedures to protect your site and data.

Lastly, decentralizing the web is crucial for maintaining control over our content and data. By hosting our own sites, we can ensure that our information remains private and secure, rather than relying on third-party services that may not always have our best interests at heart.