About
The website has been set up for more than 12 years, science the earliest post was created in July 2007.
12 years was not a long time for some people, but it’s not short for me. And this is the history for my web site in the last 12 years.
Early Stage
From the year 2003 – 2006, blogging was very popular as google bought blogger and made it available to more people. I want my blog from then, but google service was not stable or available in China, so I have to choose a different provider. The Chinese SNS giant Tencent providing non-standardized, flash-based Q-zone but it is not my style. And finally, I decided to start with space service from Microsoft MSN.
I was my blogger a little bit professional, so I bought my domain name from name.com. Then I realize I can not use my domain name on my MSN space unless I was using a business plan. That was the time I think I need to host my content on my server. And MSN spaces was also short-lived, Microsoft stopped the service and move all content to WordPress a few years later.
Hosting Service
I have to set up a blog system by my self, and also need a hosting service. This time I choose my provider very carefully. Media Temple was very popular at that time with good reputations and providing quick setup for WordPress. So I set up my first online WordPress blog on MT’s grid hosting service.
Move to VPS
Initially, I was not planned of using VPS, because setting a secured web server is not easy for me at that time, I have to spend time to learn Apache and Linux security, and also the cost of VPS was much more than hosting.
However, everything comes to a price. As I do not have full access to everything in the web hosting environment some plugin for WordPress was not functioning correctly. After research for several weeks, I finally decided to move the site to VPS — which I have total control of everything.
Up and down
The first VPS was setup on Ubuntu server on Media Temple, and they move to Linode due to high cost. So in my old blog theme, there was powered by tag with both Media Temple and Linode.
The WordPress site was running on Linode for several years, and I was able to add new features such as installing new Haproxy as tire 1 layer and adding SSL by Let’s encrypted.
After graduated from university and get a full-time job, there was a period I do not have time to look after my site, and too much customization cause difficult to keep WordPress updated.
Finally, one day I receive an alert from Google Webmaster of malware detection on my website. After a quick check on filesystems, I found few PHP files contains suspected code and external URLs. It takes me a long time to verify all PHP files and bring my site back online. Later I found it caused by an issue with WordPress software and there was a patch and fix for it but I didn’t apply those fix on my WordPress on time.
Move to WordPress hosted plan
After this incident, I move my site to WordPress hosted solution so my WordPress software will be kept updated. And also support Https with SSL from Let’s Encrypted. I was able to do https by running a script for updating my certificate every few weeks, but my Haproxy have to be restart and causing a few seconds of downtime.
Now
And now you are visiting my site powered and hosted by WordPress.
Need Not to Know 