How does my website work?
In case you wonder what technologies power this website, here’s the what and how.
While I used to run a hosted WordPress blog, I have migrated to a static website that I host on my own server. While having less bells and whistles, this essentially gives me more control and simplifies my workflow.
Here’s how my system is set up.s
Writing articles
I write my content in text files, with minimal formatting in Markdown. As an editor I use Notepad++. I whole-heartedly recommend it. A good overview of the MArkdown syntax can be found here, a good quickref is here.
Turning them into a website
The excellent static web page compiler Nanoc compiles my content and layout into a website. Here’s my Rules file.
Article extensions
I have extended Nanoc with rules and filters to create and process articles as per the tutorial building a static blog with Nanoc.
Categories
Categories are created, handled and output by some more rules and filters as per the tutorial adding categories to a static Nanoc site.
Image thumbnails
Images are automatically thumbnailed using the standard Thumbnailizer filter and ImageMagick’s ConvertImg tool. See my Rules file.
Hosting
The website is hosted on my own server running from my home.
My server hardware is a hacked D-Link DNS-320L NAS server.
Fun_plug allows to bypass the original NAS software.
Giving Debian control of the DNS-320 hardware.
Lighttp serves up the web pages.
OwnCloud runs my own cloud solution from the server.
Mailserver with Postfix - Dovecot - Roundcube - SpamAssasin provides e-mail services.
Dynu.com redirects my domain name to my (dynamic) home IP.
ddclient keeps my IP updated at Dynu.