I finally decided to move my blog from WordPress to Jekyll. Truth be told, it was for a number of reasons- and leaving WordPress was not the original impetus.

Previous Issues

There were multiple problems with my old pabloaizpiri.com blog site:

  1. It was using very old and outdated WordPress. I just never kept up with it, and I was also worried about hacking. (It was so old that went I tried to update it from the interface, it hung, and the site went down)
  2. I started getting TONS of comment spam; I think in general my site was just an easy target because it’s a generic WordPress site and the exposure just worried me.
  3. I was a heavy .NET developer back then, and I wanted to try out using MSSQL rather than MySQL. I also used a Windows machine to host the whole things using IIS, so I could have other .NET sites. Overtime, this hasn’t been as useful, and more importantly:
  4. With MSSQL, it mostly worked, but some things like search functionality were broken. Some add-ins relied on specific MySQL syntax that didn’t work on MSSQL.
  5. The previous hosting provider- Arvixe (who I guess was bought out or is “partnering” with web.com)- was charging me ~$150/year, and for what I was getting this seemed way too much.

Recently I begin working on a personal project and I got a VPS instance on Vultr. Doing so made me realize I could pay a lot less and have a lot more control. I’d also be more comfortable with the tooling since I haven’t done Windows development in years.

Getting a great deal

There used to be a deal on Vultr that was like $2.50/mo. They actually still advertise it, and it’s because from what I can tell there’s probably some edge case where you can still get it. I could not find how to do that from their interface.

From what I can tell, you can still get it when they’re “in stock” but it’s rare- and last I could tell only locations where Miami and New York.

That said, I was able to find a really cheap VPS ($3.50/mo) by disabling all other option and choosing the cheapest specifically in New York (plus IPv4):

So that’s what I did- and I started moving my domain name to Porkbun, since I have another 2 domain names with that registrar from other projects, and it’s been good so far. I’ll be canceling my Arvixe subscription soon.

That said, I could probably save even more by going with a Hostinger plan. They really do have a $2.50/mo plan as a promotional price for 4 years (which for me is long enough it might as well not be promotional). However, by the time I realized that I was in the process of moving the domain name and I don’t want to rock that boat. Plus I already set this server up and all- and don’t want to re-do all that work right now.

Migrating

Migrating actually wasn’t as simple as I was hoping it would be- as much as everyone touts Jekyll- though I’m not sure if that’s a dig. I had some issues getting rendering to work and comments, although I think that was more user error than anything. I think I’m going to be much happier here.

I’ll be writing up some posts with the details on migrating to Jekyll because I think there’s a lot of useful information for myself and possibly others.

Your old self is weird

On a side note, when moving I wanted to migrate my WordPress blogs and when doing, so I ended up reading some of them. To be honest, there’s not much value in migrating them. Some are over a decade old, and realistically I feel like a different person. A lot of things have changed for me: my perspective, how I approach problems, and probably even how I write. It’s actually slightly embarrassing to read some of them.

That said, I decided I’d keep them anyway. They’re under embarrisingly-old tag. Don’t judge me too harshly if you read them. :grimace: