As of today, I’ve flipped the switch and move all of 16 Bit Virtual Studios and my website to this shiny new site. This migration has been a long time coming and well not exactly how I originally planned it.
What was the plan?
So originally I was going to make my own site with React. It was going to be modern and have a legacy mode for older sites. The result was our HTML page which was the Virtual Studios site.
The idea was if the web browser didn’t support JS or modern JS it would render that. Then as you get more a more modern it would render more and more of the website until you get the actual fully featured website.
What went wrong?
In spite of my best efforts, what killed the project was simply time. I got too busy and React isn’t the funnest web framework I have learned. To be honest, looking back it’s a miracle YourFlix works as well as it does.
However I needed a website, and an excuse to work on it. So I mulled upon it, and learned Docker. Then mulled on it some more and got really busy. Then one day a family member came to be and said “Hey I don’t want to pay for Adobe. How do I get a website for cheap”.
This got the wheels in my head spinning, and I offered to host a Docker instance with WordPress. Which is exactly what you are reading this on right now! The results of which is fantastic, but with it’s own issues.
For one, WordPress is vicious with predatory monetization everywhere you look. Every plug in or theme has a “Pro” tier, or a Monthly subscription just waiting for you to slip up on. But if you dig around there is enough tutorials and courses which will get your site looking good enough.
The other issue was my poor choice in backend. When I originally setup this server I wanted to use industry standard solutions. So I got a RHEL clone… which turned into a mistake. My background and love id Debian and I tested everything in Debian since the guides are all based on it. But translate the same calls for reverse proxy and docker to a RHEL compatible server and you will be in for a fun time.
If I had to do this again, I would use Ubuntu or Debian.
So what went right?
With all that complaining out of the way. I am very happy with this solution. It was a lot quicker to build, a lot easier to maintain and 1,000,000% better than any half baked solutions I was making in React. Plus now I can deploy almost as many web servers as I’d like… until I run out of RAM again.
Until that time comes, or I bother to make a better solution. News, updates and honestly scripts and projects I wanted to publish but couldn’t make as a video will be here on the website! I might even start publishing written guides if time permits.