Well, here it is. My first blog post. On the brand new, shiny WordPress 3.0.1
I will miss you, giant blue alligator.
But that’s not important. I’m jumping right to it for my first post, so stay with me. I recently purchased a brand-new VPS from Linode, and I over the next week or so I plan to migrate all of my webhosting projects to it (Completely self hosted! Yeah baby!) as well as set it up for use as a development server and perhaps some other cool stuff. The thing is, going from a shared hosting environment to a full-on VPS (which functions like a dedicated server) is hard. You have to learn essentially how to configure a server from scratch, how to keep it secure and updated, and generally how to keep it running and working well for the foreseeable future. These are unmanaged servers, so while you get ultimate flexibility, you also get ultimate responsibility. Linode manages the hardware and network infrastructure, and that’s it. It’s up to you to take care of everything from the OS and up.
As such, my plan is to post a series of articles that will serve as an extended guide for migrating from a shared hosting environment (in this case HostGator) to Linode. From what I’ve seen so far, Linode’s guides do an excellent job of explaining what you need to know to get up and running, but as I’ve already found out, there are parts that need clarification or could perhaps use more explanation. It’s these types of things that I plan to elaborate on. In cases where Linode documentation is more than enough, I’ll simply link to or quote the documentation.
Along the way, I hope to add a bit of personal insight and opinion on Linode and the transition process in general. So while those looking for a guide will find what they’re looking for, you’ll also find insight and opinion on the process of transitioning from a shared hosting environment to Linode, and maybe you’ll even pick up a couple of tips about Linux system administration along the way. 
I hope you enjoy the next few weeks. At the very least, I hope I do.
-
This is a footnote test. It’s not a new feature in WordPress 3.0, but I just wanted to see how well I could do footnotes manually, because I’ll probably be using them in the upcoming articles. Seems like it worked out pretty well!
