#0001: On creating a website

I find myself sitting here at a loss as to what topic I should go with for my first article on this site. It needs to be something interesting, and more importantly this first post will set the standard for those to come; so it needs to be good.

If you read the title, you probably can guess what topic I chose. Yeah, after spinning it in my head for a while; I decided just to go with how this site came into existence. This is after all supposed to be a technical blog (of sorts), so it seems fitting that we start with the basic technology of this website itself.

So what is it that you actually need to create a website? Well, like most questions in life, the answer is: it depends. In this case I needed three things to get up and running: 1) a domain name, an official registered name for my website; 2) a site-builder, software to help me make the thing; and finally 3) a host, some always-online servers to hold the code and contents of the site, these are the computer(s) that users will connect to when they visit the website.

Initially I thought that creating a website would be no sweat. Just get a domain name, get a host, and hash out something in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS (the holy trinity!). No builders necessary. No worries. It should take me exactly “one weekend” to do this. Right?

Well, unfortunately no. I think I fell victim to my own hubris, or more accurately the Dunning-Kruger effect. There was and is so much more to the process that I was unaware of, that I actually thought it’d be straight forwards and easy. Having said that however I should outright state; that yes, creating a web site has never been simpler or easier for the uninitiated. With site builders and turn-key solutions (like wordpress.com or squarespace.com for example); that largely abstract out all the mechanical technicalities, into simple graphic interfaces that a non-technical person can intuitively operate. A good real-world example customer for these would be an artist creating an online portfolio of their works.

These solutions however did not particularly interest me much, as I am interested in the technicalities of the actual infrastructure of the website itself. This I found to be something that is largely abstracted out of relevance by these public facing and user friendly interfaces. Another concern I’d like to voice is that, although these company services do make it very straight forward to get an online presence. They do however charge you for every step on the way, and at the end of it you may end up with something that you don’t exactly want and have spent money on it to boot.

Examples include: purchasing a packaged feature-set that after gaining some experience you realise that you have no use for; or in a bid to save money: purchasing the cheapest packages available then realising after the fact, that your use-case requirements are in excess of the service package’s limitations.

This was one of my primary concerns, and as a result caused me to be very cautious when selecting something out of the numerous and quite frankly somewhat overwhelming options. So many companies, site-builders, hosts, and all the packages and deals that they use and offer. So, after some time being put off from pulling the trigger on anything in particular; then procrastinating (naturally). I finally decided to write up a clear criteria of exactly what I wanted.

I always find that when venturing into the unknown (a bit melodramatic granted), it pays to have a plan, a goal, a list of objectives, a criteria, whatever you want to call it. I have also found it most effective for that plan to be concise in nature and hierarchal in structure. Id est: a numbered list.

So here’s mine:

1. I wanted a basic website for blogging and a light hosting of files. It will consist predominantly of written articles, image rich guides, as well as to host small to medium files and programs of my own creation (<100MB each). This means the storage size needs to be in excess of 50GB. All those files and HD pictures add up quickly.
2. I wanted my own unaffiliated domain name. It looks more professional in my opinion. For example: mywebsitename.net instead of something like: mywebsitename.wordpress.com or mywebsitename.googlesites.com.
3. I wanted the site to be adequately secure against malware, spam, and intrusion with minimal intervention on my part. In other words I wanted to be hands off when it came to securing my contents. I need good ready on-hand security without having to divert my time and efforts into a rabbit-hole of research, at least for now.
4. And finally, and most importantly. I wanted to be able to have this whilst maintaining a degree of privacy. I want an online presence without freely advertising my personal information to the world at large.

So that’s it: basic small bloggers site, with it’s own name, adequate hosting, some protection, some privacy, and with a comfortable storage limit. Obvious right, well not so in my experience. There is merit in writing down the obvious and enumerating it. It brings it to the front and centre and adds it to an objective hierarchy that one can work from.

In the end, after a frustrating period of paralysis via analysis, and exploring a multitude of different options on the market; I decided to just take the shortest route to my goal. Perhaps not the best route for my personal use-case, but that is the kind of thing one sees with experience and hindsight. So I decided to pick a reasonable option and just jump in and see how it goes.

And that is exactly what I did; I ended up going with wordpress.org as my choice of website builder. Three main reasons: one, it’s ubiquity – it is well known, well used, and well documented. So any issues I may come across, chances are good that someone else has, and probably documented a solution to boot. The second reason I liked WordPress, was because of it’s open-source and community driven nature. This makes it versatile meaning if there is a particular feature I wished for, chances are that someone else has, and has a documented implementation of it somewhere. Lastly, the third reason is simple, it is free. This allowed me to tinker with it without any financial investments.

As to why I didn’t just build the website out from source myself. Well beyond making a basic website consisting of static webpages linked together, this was beyond my skill-set and interest level at this time if I am honest. I wasn’t willing to spend the time and effort to learn to implement every little feature that I wanted for it. This could include anything from animated drop-down menus, to allowing user comments, or embedding videos within articles. It would have required more of a personal investment than I was willing to put in at the time; especially since I just wanted something useable and customisable to be up and running in a timely fashion. That, and I couldn’t justify taking time from other projects and responsibilities, the reward to work ratio wasn’t sufficient.

Please note, there is a distinct difference between wordpress.org and wordpress.com. WordPress.org is just the open source website builder software. Whereas wordpress.com is a company that bundles in the website builder with their own hosting and support services. They are not the same entity.

Next up, hosting. This one is quite simple since as far as I know, one competent host is as good as another. I went with bluehost.com since they were recommended from wordpress.org via affiliate links. Their prices for what I wanted were also reasonable. Funnily enough, I got my domain name via bluehost’s partners. So it was a case of choosing WordPress and being funnelled to affiliates and partner’s services for the rest. It made things simple and since I actually have little experience in setting up websites; I was more concerned with not using the “wrong” company (dodgy or otherwise) or “wrong” tools (wasting time learning inferior tool sets – been there done that…), than I was concerned with choosing the best deal. As long as what I got was what was advertised, and what was advertised was good enough to get started.

With the WordPress optimised setup, I ended up with a “shared webhost service”. Essentially my website would be sharing the server with many others like it. This is because a simple WordPress website doesn’t really need anything that requires dedicated hardware. For example: large processing capabilities for online gaming. This website wasn’t going to be folding proteins or using their server for automated stock trading or anything like that. It also didn’t need a large reservoir of storage space available, since it wasn’t an archival or file hosting website.

The “shared webhost service” is the one of the cheaper options available. Others include a “virtual private server”, this is a mid-tier option allowing the subscriber to have a virtual server with it’s own allotted RAM and CPU usage. Additionally, and probably the most expensive option available is renting a dedicated server. Its exactly what it sounds like, the subscriber just rents a box dedicated to just them; and consequently they can have complete control over it. The latter two mentioned here are overkill for this humble hobbyist’s blog. They are more appropriate for the other examples I mentioned above.

While I was going through the processing of setting up the host; and looking through their various options; two features/services that they offered popped out to me, and I would like to highlight them for you. The first is “domain privacy” and the second is that of “SSL Certificate”.

Domain Privacy. This basically allows you to own the website without having your personal information plastered all over whois.com (or who.is, or whois.net, or what have you). Websites that comb website registrars for ownership information. As the newly minted website owner, your contact information would be listed there. Alarmingly, this includes: your full name, address! and any contact numbers or email addresses you provided whilst registering the site. It should also be noted that lying on the registration is apparently punishable by law (I read that somewhere during the signing process, but I can’t find a direct reference or link stating that. Apologies). Unfortunately I can’t actually speak to exactly where it applies, and what kind of punishment.

This is not really a problem for a business, with its own legal identity and premises; however it most certainly a problem for the private individual. If you then purchase “domain privacy” from the hosting or registering company, this will result in them acting as a mediator and using their information as a substitute for yours on these public listing.

I believe different countries have different laws regarding public displays of website owner’s personal information, via sites like who.is. Some permit it by default, others favour the owner’s privacy and don’t allow the display by default. My concern here is, although I live in a country that [with regards strictly to this] favours the individual’s privacy, the company that I’m doing business with is in another country, one that does not. Whose countries laws takes priority? Is seemed like the more prudent thing for me to do was to just purchase this service, rather than leave it to chance.

The second feature of note I encountered, is that of a “SSL certificate”. Put simply this gives the website a certificate of authenticity. This is issued from some association charged with verifying that the websites users connect to are who they say they are. In addition this allows secure connections to site servers using the HTTPS protocol. This is important to me as I know I am rather reticent to visit many non-https websites, especially since many modern browsers such as Firefox (circa 2020), warn users who connect to non-https or unsecured websites. Its just another layer of security to take advantage of. One that grants a level of authenticity.

Moving on. It should be noted that when I purchased the hosting I also got the ability to setup my own emails system using cPanel. cPanel is a general control panel for web hosts that enables you to control all the various programs for your website. In this case an email client. I decided to go with one central email address (mail@tinkerersblog.net) using the webmail service and the roundcube mail client. There are other options of email client available, including: Horde and squirrelmail.

That’s basically the process from start to finish. At this point I have a basic WordPress template site and email. All that was left was to customise it to my liking and create content. In retrospect, the biggest hurdle for me was the over-abundance of choice on the market. It required an exhaustive process of researching and vetting the various services, and options available there-in. Other than that, once you have chosen a particular company, host, or web-builder you like; they tend to do a good job of keeping you in their ecosystem for the rest of the things you need to get set up. They do this predominantly via affiliate links and discounts.

The funny thing is now that I am committed and have paid approximately £180 for a 3 year deal for this site; I still think that maybe I could have found something better. A particular tool-set, or cheaper deal that would suit me more, maybe I invested into a bad company or technology, or perhaps I made a mistake when buying optional add-ons? Who knows? I guess I will, later. Still though, it is a nagging feeling that lingers on after the decision has been made.

Besides, the primary objective was to get started and that has been done. It’s only really with hindsight that I can make better decisions for my particular use-case; and that comes later. I guess that Steven Wright quote holds water here: “Experience is the thing you get just after you needed it” … I am paraphrasing. Anyway, That’s all for my musings.

Thank you for reading.

Sources / References / Further reading:

https://whois.icann.org/en/domain-name-registration-process
https://whois.icann.org/en/about-whois
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHOIS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPanel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webmail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundcube
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SquirrelMail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horde_(software)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_privacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript
https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/wordpress-differences-beginners-guide/