Happy New Year 2020

Yes, yes I know it is already April. The year 2020 has proven challenging not only to some of us but all of us globally. I hope everyone is staying safe with their loved ones.

Server Updates

I recently had to move this blog to a new server because:

• The old server was an OpenVZ instance and it is not straightforward to upgrade the outdated OS, Ubuntu 14.04 which has reached the end of standard support.
• Since Ubuntu 14.04 has reached the end of support, it was impossible to upgrade PHP. It was running PHP 5.5.9.
• Since WordPress 5.4 requires at least PHP 5.6, it was impossible to upgrade from WordPress 5.1.4
• The old hosting company decided to increase the hosting price by €20, which is not a small amount for a slow OpenVZ instance.

So I decided to move on to another hosting provider, this time I will have control over my own kernel and will be charged pay-per-use.

It has a smaller spec but different virtualization technology. The new server is on Ubuntu 18.04.4 with PHP 7.4.5.

Improvements I made on the new server are:

• Use certbot on all hosted domains so that communication between Cloudflare and my server is always valid HTTPS
• The site is now 100% HTTPS via Cloudflare. It can be served directly via HTTPS too.
• All scripts are now pushed using Ansible
• Git based updates for projects such as the automated prayer times

Many things have changed as well, such as better responsive themes and more robust plugins.

Historically, this blog was started in 2005 on WordPress version 1.5 and has moved through 5 different hosting providers.

Personal Update

Since my last post, I have moved through 6 different jobs. Time flies.

I am also older now so I don’t really have much energy to rant, but expect more mixed ramblings from me from time to time 😉

In Malaysia, the country has been in the Movement Control Order (MCO) for more than a month now and it is certainly a significant change in lifestyle.

Let’s hope that COVID-19 goes away as soon as possible so that we can live “the new normal”.

Until the next post, stay safe people, wherever you are.