Updates

Over the past few weeks I have been changing the way content is deployed on my server. The most obvious change I have made is this blog, where I have written my own custom theme, and begun writing these posts in org-mode. However, in the background I have changed the back-end from using regular services installed directly to my server to instead using docker to containerize everything on the server. Along with this I have also changed a lot with my home network.

Homepage

Even though this was changed a while ago I still thing there is some merit into talking about it. The design I have went for is a clean old type of website without any excess javascript or styling, this is to help load times and prevent there from being any unneeded bloat. With the typography being in monospace, the content of the website is clear and easy to read. With the website being so minimal, it is a lot easier to maintain and has minimal, if any security flaws that most modern websites suffer with.

Hugo Updates

I decided to redesign this blog page to match my homepage. As with the homepage, the blog has a light footprint and generates the needed pages quickly due to the low file size and amount of all the extra CSS needed. The theme lacks a lot of what other themes have, but for the use of this blog I believe that this does not matter. I have also rewritten the main pages in org-mode using emacs. This has made it easier and a lot easier to see the final result of the page within just emacs, due to the live preview of org-mode files built-in with emacs.

Server Backend Updates

As stated earlier, I have changed my backend from using services to dockerized containers. This took quite a while as I needed to learn how to utilize traefik for my reverse proxy, with some needing more work than others. Switching to docker was a pain, and it is considerably more bloated, however it makes maintenance and keeping my services up to date a lot more easier.

Around this time I noticed my mail server wasn't working, and it hadn't been working for quite some time. To this day I still have no idea what caused the mail server to stop working, but my suspicions are with the certificates. To make matters worse, during this time cron had been sending me emails every minute on a failing task, in the end I had around 107k emails sent to the mail box.

Home-network changes

Like the server, I had changed my home server to also run docker containers instead of the services I had running. This allowed me to also utilize pi-hole in a container, allowing me to register network ride cname's and DNS entrys that are not possible on my modem.

I have also recently bought myself an actual home server. The server in question is a Dell R610, which came with no ram or hard disks installed. When the server is setup, it should be a good replacement for my current server, a Dell Optiplex 9020. It will also give me room to play around with server grade hardware and improve my skills with such.