Moving to Django
My web server has been in desperate need of replacement for some time - its version of Ubuntu server was reaching end of life, and it kept running our of RAM because it was using the smallest of the old type of Amazon web services virtual machines. This meant that every time someone tried to brute force the 3Dami websites password (disturbingly common - the problem with using Wordpress) or we had a major burst in traffic the database would use up too much memory, and be killed, to save the server as a whole. Rather irritating to say the least - the old setup actually had a cron job run every 10 minutes to start the db server again if it had gone down!
Have been waiting for the release of Ubuntu server 16.04, which is now installed on a 'one size bigger' server, with SSD storage instead of magnetic - this server should be a hell of lot faster, and much more robust. Doesn't matter for this, my personal website, but for the 3Dami website (same server!) it will really help, particularly as we are about to start the advertising push for this years event(s).
Unfortunately, as I discovered with the move, my personal website was not compatible with more recent versions of PHP, on account of running on a really old CMS. In fact, I have been using that CMS since I was an undergrad at university, which may give an indication of just how old and unsupported it is. As I am hardly downgrading PHP it seems my bank holiday weekend is now an exercise in reimplementing my website using Django. Am aiming for feature parity and maintaining the urls from the previous website (as redirects to the new and improved urls). At the time of writing this post I have only got the bare minimum up - its going to be at least another day before it's back to normal.
Sunday evening edit: Website now has feature parity with the old one, though is looking really ugly and I have copied over only the most recent articles from the old system.
Monday morning edit: All of the old content is now up. Now I need to go make sure all the old (external) links work and make it pretty.
Monday lunchtime edit: All done!
Have been waiting for the release of Ubuntu server 16.04, which is now installed on a 'one size bigger' server, with SSD storage instead of magnetic - this server should be a hell of lot faster, and much more robust. Doesn't matter for this, my personal website, but for the 3Dami website (same server!) it will really help, particularly as we are about to start the advertising push for this years event(s).
Unfortunately, as I discovered with the move, my personal website was not compatible with more recent versions of PHP, on account of running on a really old CMS. In fact, I have been using that CMS since I was an undergrad at university, which may give an indication of just how old and unsupported it is. As I am hardly downgrading PHP it seems my bank holiday weekend is now an exercise in reimplementing my website using Django. Am aiming for feature parity and maintaining the urls from the previous website (as redirects to the new and improved urls). At the time of writing this post I have only got the bare minimum up - its going to be at least another day before it's back to normal.
Sunday evening edit: Website now has feature parity with the old one, though is looking really ugly and I have copied over only the most recent articles from the old system.
Monday morning edit: All of the old content is now up. Now I need to go make sure all the old (external) links work and make it pretty.
Monday lunchtime edit: All done!