Categories
Social Media Technology

Brought to you by HTTPS

As you can see when you access this page, I’ve made the move to HTTPS. I detail the experience at my new technology-only site, Shelley’s Toy Box.

I upgraded my server before I made the move, and eliminated all the cruft. I also moved my DNS records over to my name registrar, rather than manage on the server.

All in all, the experience was challenging at times, but also interesting. It was fun tweaking with the tech, and I need to do more tech tweaking in the future.

One of the downsides to the move is removing my archived statically generated HTML pages. I now get, on average, over seven hundred 404 requests a day. The numbers will go down as I gradually add the older content into this site, and as search engines drop references to the missing pages. Still, I feel like one big link black hole right now.

The Wayback Machine is extremely helpful when it comes to recovering pages that, for whatever reason, I don’t have backups for. I even found a link to my earliest weblog, a Manila site, hosted by Dave Winer and Userland.  I was excited when I found the link. My reactions to the events of 9/11 were recorded in my Manila weblog, and I don’t have a backup of the old posts.

I could have dropkicked Dave Winer when I discovered all the pages have the same message:

Your crawler is hitting our servers too hard. Please slow down, it’s hurting the service we provide to our customers. Thanks. webmaster@userland.com.

Thankfully most of the pages for my many other sites and weblogs are intact. When I restore a page, I try to include a link to the Wayback Machine archive page, because the site also archived the comments.

Seriously, if you’re not donating to the Internet Archive, you should think about starting. It’s our history.

Categories
Internet Technology Web

The slowness of IPv6

When I set up my new server and moved my DNS records to my name registrar, I also included records for my server’s IPv6 address (2600:3c00::f03c:91ff:fecf:250d), as well as the familiar IPv4 address (72.14.184.192).  Supporting both is known as dual stack.

I didn’t have to support IPv6 since I do have an IPv4 address, but if I’m going to do the shiny new with my site, I’m going to go shiny, new all the way.

Besides, there’s no more room at the inn with the old IPv4 system. We’ve run out of web addresses under the old IPv4 addressing system.  The current IPv4 system only allows for 4.3 billion addressed, and they’ve all been assigned.

Yeah, haven’t we been prolific on the web.

Categories
Internet Technology Web

The slowness of IPv6

When I set up my new server and moved my DNS records to my name registrar, I also included records for my server’s IPv6 address (2600:3c00::f03c:91ff:fecf:250d), as well as the familiar IPv4 address (72.14.184.192).  Supporting both is known as dual stack.

I didn’t have to support IPv6 since I do have an IPv4 address, but if I’m going to do the shiny new with my site, I’m going to go shiny, new all the way.

Besides, there’s no more room at the inn with the old IPv4 system. We’ve run out of web addresses under the old IPv4 addressing system.  The current IPv4 system only allows for 4.3 billion addressed, and they’ve all been assigned.

Yeah, haven’t we been prolific on the web.

Categories
Technology Web

Moving to HTTPS: First, you upgrade everything

I was one of the lucky folks who received an email from Google warning me that it was going to start marking input fields in my sites as unsafe. “Time to move to HTTPS”, it smugly informed me.

It irks me that we’ve given a company such power over us that it can force us into using technology before we’re ready. However, I knew it was a matter of time before I’d have to go to HTTPS, so decided to just bite the bullet and get it done.

But if I move to HTTPS, I’m making the task a component of an overall site upgrade.  That was my original intent all along…incorporating HTTPS into a total site makeover. Except my plan was to finish by year-end, rather than October. Best laid plans…

Categories
Technology Web

Upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04 the Linode Way

It seems like only yesterday when I upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04, but it’s been several years and it’s time now to move on to Ubuntu 16.04.

Once before I’d tried to upgrade Ubuntu to a new major release in place. In other words, upgrade my current installation.

It didn’t go well.