Blot It just takes and turns a folder into a website. Text files in the folder automatically become web pages on the site
We have already mentioned a dozen ways to use a personal VPS in a minimal configuration for 130 rubles. This is a cloud storage for files, an archive for backups, a mail server, a game server, etc. You can install almost any software on it: 0.5 GB of RAM is enough to run most Linux applications (without GUI).
And a web server with a personal website and blog is one such application. Why not? For a dollar a month, investing in your personal brand and technological independence will pay off many times over.
▍ Hosting a website on RUVDS virtual machines
In our instructions, you can read in detail about purchasing a domain, linking a domain name to a server, and setting up a VPS server. She will walk you through each step of the process:
- Website creation (for example, in the constructor).
- Selecting a VPS configuration, ordering a server.
- Purchasing a domain name, setting up DNS records, linking the domain name to the server.
- Hosting a website on a server (copying files).
- Setting up and launching a web server.
To summarize briefly, there are two options for placement:
- Order a minimum configuration instance “VPS Start” for 130 rubles per month, install a web server and other software on it according to the instructions above.
- CPU 1×2.2 GHz
- RAM 0.5 GB
- Disk: HDD (OS) 10 GB
- IP address: 1
- Order at marketplace ready-made template LAMP – CentOS 7 (LAMP is Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP). It is a stable build with installed and configured software under the CentOS operating system.
Installed software:
- web server Apache (httpd), although you can install nginx and others instead;
- MariaDBa popular fork of MySQL;
- PHP;
- python2-certbot (allows you to quickly configure traffic encryption on port 443);
- Fail2ban (protection against attacks via SSH and HTTP protocols).
Here is a server with a more powerful configuration than the minimal “Start”:
- CPU 2×2.2 GHz
- RAM 2 GB
- Disk SSD (OS) 20 GB
- IP address: 1
This option costs RUB 1,067 per month (RUB 854 if paid annually). For new users, three days to test the server are provided free of charge.
The process of ordering and installing VPS is fully automated; it starts in just two clicks.
If you don’t use a designer, the simplest website can consist of one page index.html
(example) and one file style.css
(example) that we edit on our home computer (for example, in the folder /htdocs
), and then copy it to the server with a simple command rsync
:
rsync -avz htdocs [email protected]:/var/www/
This is the standard way /var/www/htdocs/index.html
from where the web server takes web pages for distribution based on external requests.
All that remains is to start the web server.
▍ Non-standard web servers
In addition to the standard LAMP template, there are several not entirely standard ways to set up a web server. You can try these options on the minimum “Start” tariff for 130 rubles. Save money and gain experience.
For example, web server in Bashwithout any socat
, netcat
and so on. This is one script bash-server.sh 507 lines, which contains all the operations and actions of the web server.
Particularly worth mentioning is the platform Blot, which simply takes and turns a folder into a website. Text files in the folder (.txt, .md, .rtf, .docx, .odt, etc.) automatically become web pages on the site:
This is essentially a static site generator for those who are not familiar with such generators.
The engine recognizes Markdown, formulas and program code (on KDPV).
All files in the folder become public and are automatically available for download (except for files whose names begin with _underscore). That is, if you upload a file Archive.zip
to a folder /files
it is immediately available for download at http://адрес.сайта/Files/Archive.zip
. Cm. example site on Blot (blog) and files of this site.
Blot can be installed on your server (for free) or you can buy cloud hosting from the developer. By the way, his personal website is located on an unusual domain lllllllllllllllll.com.
Or here Pocketbase. In a nutshell, this is an open source backend for any SaaS service or mobile application in one file. The file includes a real-time DBMS, an authentication system, a file storage and a dashboard.
Pocketbase can only be installed on your own server (VPS); the cloud service is not yet available. But everything is completely under control and free. The developers say that even on a cheap VPS (two CPUs, 4 GB RAM), the engine can easily handle more than 10,000 connections in real time (benchmarks).
There is something to experiment with.
▍ Why do you need a personal website in 2024
Traditionally, a personal website is used for several purposes:
- Business card author as an alternative or addition to the profile on
LinkedInKhabracareer (personal information, work resume, list of projects, links to social networks, etc.), here example. - Blog for periodic publication of texts on any topic. These can be notes about absolutely anything: travel notes, notes on a work topic, thoughts about books read or films watched, travel reports, new strategies for completing games, new recipes, whatever.
The two main types of blog posts are: 1) posts about what the author has learned and 2) posts about new projects he has done or plans to do.
In addition, it makes sense to keep a record of important information so as not to forget it.
A person probably forgets up to 99% of the information that passes through short-term working memory. Unfortunately, even important information is not included long term memory or may disappear from there over time. The only way to preserve memories is to capture them in writing, preferably with photographs and screenshots. Some of this content may be published publicly.
In addition to these standard tasks, you can use your personal website and more creative. Here are some ideas of what you can do on your personal website:
- List of favorite books
- Movie recommendations page
- Add dark mode
- Hide easter egg
- Guest book for reviews
- Write comments in HTML for those who will read the code
- List of interesting web pages (articles, sites, blog posts, photos, games, etc.) from the latest
- Alt text for images
- If you publish scientific works on your website, add a section describing how to properly reference them
- Make an “anti-library” with your books that you haven’t read or don’t plan to read.
- Add a section with puzzles
- Keep a list of what you have added to your site (#sitedocumentation)
- List of words you have recently learned
- Add an RSS feed so people can subscribe
- Archive page with links to all site posts
- Translate a website page into another language that you know or are learning
- Highlight code snippets with syntax highlighting (like Prism.js)
- Add a search function to your site
- Add lite-youtube to speed up YouTube loading (embedded video)
- List of favorite podcasts
- Write a story about creating a personal website
- Add a “Human Written” button if you create all the content yourself
- Add notes to the pages
- Write yourself a reminder post that will be automatically published in a week or any other day in the future
This is just a small part of the list hundreds of ideas And additions to him. Many of them are useful for both work and personal development.
In general, your own website is a very useful thing.
▍ Technological independence
Full self-hosting provides a person technological independence. This means not depending on any particular company, vendor or software, using only open source tools, preferably the most common ones that come standard with Linux.
You just need to master a few basic Linux tools to set up your own server and manage it for the rest of your life.
Even a third-party certification authority (CA) is not needed. Can raise your CA and arrange the issuance of your own certificates. To encrypt HTTPS traffic between devices, self-signed certificates and standard encryption are sufficient. Moreover, you can have X.509 certificates that will be accepted by all browsers. Mine server with private CA sometimes more convenient than standard Let’s Encrypt.
Nowadays, self-hosting, launching a personal server and a personal website is not such a simple procedure. Yes, some stages are automated. For example, installing an OS on a VPS in two clicks. But almost all other software has to be installed manually. One can imagine an ideal future where everyone can set up their own server using the most simplified procedure possible. This it will look something like this:
- Download and install the “self-hosting app” on any computer, VPS, old laptop or Android mobile phone.
- Fast OAuth2 authentication for connecting to a channel for incoming traffic.
- Easy installation of all specialized applications like Jellyfin, Calendar, Nextcloud, etc. Everything is containerized, isolated and secure by default.
- Backup is performed automatically (ideally to similar instances of friends via OAuth2).
There are no technical obstacles to implementing such a plan. They are trying to do something similar within the project Sandstorm, although the platform has not yet received much development. Model Sandstorm:
Operating system developers could add this functionality by default to Android, iOS, and other operating systems. When you turn on your smartphone for the first time, a person can immediately set up a personal website in several screens, which will be distributed from this smartphone (or from a VPS, so as not to keep the phone on 24/7).
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