Site News on Aaron West's technology blog

Recap of 2011 posts

Sun, 07 Mar 2021 14:55:00 -0600

I spent time this weekend migrating my 2011 blog posts from the old site design to the new static design. Despite it being monotonous work it was a fun stroll down memory lane. I wrote about a bunch of different topics that year and after the break, I discuss a few of the posts that were particularly interesting and impactful.

Most popular blog posts

Two of my most read blog posts ever come from 2011. I wrote two “super guides” which discussed how to install and configure the ColdFusion application server on Ubuntu and CentOS Linux. As I often do, I wrote those blog posts explaining everything you needed to do to get up and running with ColdFusion on Linux. From the basic installation process to tweaking JVM memory settings, to securing things server-side. I’ve been fairly successful with this approach and those two posts are shining examples. All told, they amassed just over 400,000 views.

Modernizing This Website

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 11:34:00 -0500

Welcome to the new, modernized, mobile-friendly aaronwest.net. I’ve been writing on the Internet for nearly 20 years in one form or another. My journey started in the early 2000s when I set up a virtual Linux server and blogged at trajiklyhip.com. After a few years, I acquired aaronwest.net and switched everything to the new domain and new blogging software. I still ran my own Linux server where I managed an Apache webserver, ColdFusion application server, and MySQL database backend. It was quite a bit of work managing the full stack of software but I loved it. Writing software was not only my day job but something I cared so deeply about I spoke at developer conferences, led hands-on software engineering workshops, and eventually moved into technical leadership roles.

Products That Make This Site Possible

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:02:00 -0600

For the past few months I’ve been planning on writing a post about the services that make this site possible. I’ve read these sorts of posts on other sites and they seem very marketing heavy. They’re often titled “sponsor post” or something equivalent. This post is different. I’m genuinely a fan (and customer) of all of these services and in most cases I pay for them monthly. After the break I discuss each service/app I rely on to power this site. I put each service within category blocks such as: the server, the app, backups, uptime, etc.

My Blog is Now Hosted at Linode

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:00:00 -0500

Last week I accomplished something I had been thinking about for at least a year, moving this blog to my own server. I had been hosting this site with a popular shared hosting provider for nearly four years and had not been happy for a long time. Picking a shared hosting provider in 2005 had been a pretty easy thing to do. I wasn’t too comfortable with managing an entire Linux server so having others take care of it while I simply managed and wrote content was a good choice.