There is probably a thing one does for the first post. Just like a first program should output “hello world”.
Instead I might just mention what this blog is running on: An AWS tiny instance. Actually cheap*. Latest WordPress as per June 2020. Actually free. It has been more than 15 years since I installed WordPress the first time. Over the last ten I had little reason to deal with it. After this hiatus it was interesting to see what has changed. And what has not.
Getting the technology stack going today was the usual mix out of ‘oh this is nice’ and ‘wth – why is this broken now’. The actual work is not even that much or particularly complicated. Just that there are these unpredictable potholes where one can get stuck for hours on end. Without having the faintest idea when and how a solution might emerge.
It appears in the end it worked out OK. I don’t think I would want to work on WordPress ‘powered’ sites for a living though. Hacking (like in axe, not as in computer skill) the extraneous items off from the default theme was cumbersome enough. Trying to chase specifics out of a mediocre theme is probably not much a fun.
*and as it turns out not sufficient. I got everything ‘up’. But running things was not pleasant / possible. MariaDB liked crashing. Not wanting to make a project from it I asked
mysqltuner.pl
and it laconically replied:
Variables to adjust: *** MySQL's maximum memory usage is dangerously high *** *** Add RAM before increasing MySQL buffer variables ***
Stoping the aws instance, starting it at – now as a tiny instance – gives me the same reply. But it is work trying, since the next level up gets me into even higher monthly costs.