I used to have a website on Webs.com; it was a Maddox-inspired website. I wrote articles that were just rants about things that were bothering me, and it just felt good to write in that style. It’s abrasive, vulgar, aggressive, and all-round negative writing. It contains harsh language, anger, and an ignorant condescending attitude. Everything the growing body needs.
My site consisted of little more than text on the screen, with the occasional picture up to further illustrate my point. These pictures were all PG-13 or lower.
I have no idea what got Webs.com’s panties in a bunch, but they didn’t much care for my site, and without any warning shut it down. After a while, I got a slight clue as to what the problem may be:
“Your site was suspended for adult or other inappropriate content. We have temporarily reactivated your site to investigate. We have decided to reactivate your site. Keep in mind that to avoid future complaints or suspensions, you should tone down the content of your site. Also keep in mind that our accounts are monitored by other companies and that sudden suspension without warning can be a result if they feel your site is objectionable. Please reply with further questions.”
I posted absolutely no adult content on my site, aside from harsh language. For a brief period, webs.com unfroze my account to allow me to download every file I’d posted there and store it locally, so it was all a big annoyance rather than a crippling blow.
I sent them 3 emails asking what exactly had been the problem, and that canned response was all I got. While the content of my site wasn’t positive, it was in some way enjoyable, and violated no rules.
Let this be a lesson to everyone: don’t use bad words on your sites that are run from Webs.com.
But, aside from all of that, I learned some tidbits about proper design of a website. What started as a couple articles soon bloomed into about 15-20 articles, and I needed some kind of uniform framework to post things in. I needed a consistent header, footer, and file includes. I didn’t want to have to copy and paste all of ‘em every time. And what if I decided to change my site’s design? I’d have to go into every file and change it. 20 files might not be much, but I planned on writing even more, so I needed something fast.
I discovered Server Side Includes (SSI). These allowed me to include files on every page that contained the framework. Now I include a header.html, a footer.html, and an “includes.html” file. These are included on every page, and if I ever decide to change the framework, I only have to change it in one place rather than on every page.
The more I looked into these though, the more I realized they weren’t very robust, and were not guaranteed to work anywhere. I needed a better solution besides these archaic coding directives. I decided to finally try php out for myself. And what better time than when Webs.com decided to shut my site down.
That was the moment that ticked me off enough to try hosting it on my own server. I’d toyed with the idea, but never followed through with it. I had an old (and by old, I mean about 7 years) dell desktop tower that I wasn’t using anymore. I had always wanted a linux computer, just to try it out, so I chose Ubuntu.
Installing Ubuntu is by far the easiest thing ever to do, so I don’t even need to bother explaining it.
I didn’t know much about linux at all… but I had heard everywhere that linux was the way to go for servers. Sure, I could serve up a webpage from my personal computer that I play games on, but that’s too easy, and I’d like to utilize its resources for video games and stuff instead; serving up web pages was going to eat up resources. I wanted a dedicated box I’d never have to touch or deal with that just served up my website, and that’s it. And, why not, I’d learn more about what the fuss was with regards to linux. I considered it a challenge to learn how to not only make a webserver, but make a webserver in linux.
I’d heard of the I’d heard of the LAMP platform so I decided to try that. Ubuntu surprisingly has tons of documentation on stuff. Any question I had, google had the answer. I installed LAMP, put my content in the right place, and put my site live. I converted everything into php, and began using php includes to bring in anything I needed.
Awesome, right? Well, there was one problem… the only way to access my site was through my ip address. I’d rather not have people remembering my ip address, especially since it can change at the drop of a hat.
And so, I set out to find a domain: hylianux.com. I googled and googled until I finally understood how domains work, and what a domain is.
this is a domain: google.com
this is a subdomain: mail.google.com
this is a subdomain of a subdomain: happy.mail.google.com
etc.
I wanted a hylianux.com, so I chose godaddy for my registration. They seemed legit to me, and have a fairly good system. Sure, when Anonymous attacked them the site didn’t work because they’re dumb enough to keep all information on their own servers. It was easy to use. But, having said all of that, if I had to do it all over again, I’d choose no-ip. The reason is simple: I don’t want to pay for a static IP address, and no-ip has a little application that will update their zone file automatically with whatever my new ip address is should it ever change, effectively keeping my entire operation static. Update: I’ve since moved to using no-ip as my domain registrar.
Anyway, I bought a domain, registered it, and learned how to point it to my ip address so you’d see my domain at the top of the address bar.
All problems had been solved. I finally had a place to post whatever I wanted (literally), a more advanced server side scripting language to keep my content more manageable, and a domain for people to access it very easily.
Ubuntu was a great learning platform for me to learn it all, and get a server up and running. Sure, it took me almost a week to get everything up and running, but I enjoyed the challenge and the puzzle. I knew I could get it working, because so many others already had. Forum post after forum post, google search after google search… I never ran out of things to try.