Is This Thing On?

Welcome to the latest version of my personal site. I've made a few changes since taking down my old blog. I've moved the site to a new domain and it's no longer running on Wordpress.

I had two main goals for ralpost. One was to have full administrative control over the server it runs on, the other was to run the main section of my site, at least, using a general purpose application framework rather than a dedicated blogging application.

To get the control I wanted I opted for a VPS solution at linode.com. This allows me to install and run my own server without having to physically host the box myself. Given my current needs, a VPS represents the best blend of autonomy, convenience, security and cost.

For my application framework I initially selected the refreshingly simple CherryPy together with Mako and SQLite, but I confess, I became frustrated with having to code the innumerable forms and endless CRUD required to manage the application and so I eventually switched to Django. Django's ORM and its renowned site admin application made (very) short work of the stuff that had been taking me so long to build by hand on top of CherryPy. Django contained more complexity than I wanted, but the time saving benefits of that complexity were compelling. Django it would be (for the time being at least!)

Instead of PostgreSQL or MySQL I've opted to use SQLite as my data store. I wanted to minimize complexity wherever possible and SQLite should be more than capable of handling my modest needs. Not only is my application read-heavy and write-light, the level of traffic it's likely to receive is not even going to cause SQLite to get warm. The full details of what I'm running on this server are on my about page.

I've tried to keep this version of my site as simple as possible, both in terms of the software powering it and the design of the pages themselves. I've dispensed with two-column layouts, extraneous side-bar information and graphics-dependent design. Ralpost is close to being a text-only site at present.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. As you can see, things around here are very basic at the moment with only blog posts and an "about" page as I write this. The comments are currently disabled for I've yet to add anti-spam filtering. When I've done that I'll switch them on.