Hello, is this thing on?

I’m not known for my elaborate stories about how my weekend was, or what I did during my weeks of vacation. But, maybe.. just maybe, two years without an update is a bit too long?

I recently saw a video by NetworkChuck where he explained his new, overly complex (read: quite fascinating) blog setup which kind of reminded me of the fact that I actually have a blog as well. So maybe I should use that one over setting up a new one?

Most people are not aiming for an overly complex setup. Instead they go for tried and true setups like Wordpress or Ghost, preferably hosted by someone else who can spend their time on making sure everything is patched and good to go.

But where’s the fun in that?

My lazy approach to pushing content

My setup isn’t nearly as complex as the one NetworkChuck explains in his video (embedded at the bottom of the post, for reference) but I still enjoy an automagic deploy flow and static content over a dynamic setup, which requires maintenance and security hardening.

My setup consists of the following:

1. Hugo - An awesome static site builder which converts Markdown files to HTML, with some clever tooling and lots of extensibility options for those of us who cannot resist to make tings a bit more complex than they have to be.
2. Git - Any content on this site is committed to a Git repo, which allows me to just push the content from my terminal to..
3. Github - Where a small pipeline picks up the changes, processes the content for me and pushes it to..
4. Linode Akamai Connected Cloud (it just rolls of the tounge, doesn’t it?) where I keep my VPS¹ (Virtual Private Server).
5. Let’s Encrypt - Provides free TLS certificates. I’ve automated the renewal process so it’s even less work than updating a bought certificate every other year.
6. Cloudflare - Provides caching, DDoS protection, DNS management, E-mail forwarding and other excellent tools.

It’s worth mentioning that most of those tools are free, with the exceptions being Akamai and my personal domain name.

For those who are more interested in getting started with AWS, it’s very possible to host static content for free using S3 and CloudFront. The hosting part might even be simpler than learning to navigate the AWS Console.

Anyway, now that I’ve shared some details about my setup.. it’s time to see if it still works after two years.

Fly safe!
o7

As promised, here’s the video where NetworkChuck explains his new blog setup.

¹ The VPS is used for more things than hosting this blog. It’s very possible to host a small site with static content for free.