Category: WordPress

Everything old…

December 6, 2024 / Jim / 0 Comments

So over the last few years I’ve moved this website to a few different hosting companies. And I’ve tried a few ways to manage content. First, with a goal of learning HTML, I built it out of pure HTML with a simple editor. Later I migrated to WordPress. And until now, had also learned the underbelly of WordPress by installing my site on an AWS instance.

Today this site is back at Namecheap as a hosted WordPress site. This decision was driven by the fact that the AWS platform, powered by Bitnami, ran on old version of PHP and there was no easy way to upgrade it without a complete rebuild (based on everything I could read). It wasn’t impossible but the experiment of building and hosting a website on AWS was successful, and I learned a lot.

So just an update. Clearly it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Life is busy. I hope to return here more often with updates for the legions of jimmundy.com fans. Until then all is well.

SSL the Hard Way

July 12, 2020 / Jim / 0 Comments

I’m continuing the journey of building this WordPress site in a bit of a hybrid fashion. It is not an “easy button” method like WordPress.com or even a hosting provider’s managed solution. But I also didn’t start with a raw cloud VM somewhere and built the LAMP stack.

This day the big accomplishment is that I FINALLY was able to figure out SSL, get my SSL certificate created and uploaded, and get the sought after “closed lock” when arriving at this site via HTTPS.

It s not like I’m taking credit cards or dealing with any PII (personally identifiable information). But even for casual browsing many browsers now require, or favor, the encrypted connection via HTTPS.

The effort was a challenge. I could have gone with the quick and free auto-configuration option of a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate. This method is offered by my current platform provider. I wanted to generate a key, order a certificate, install it, configure it, and launch it. I learn by doing. And hopefully you are now seeing the result of that effort.

Site Progress

July 5, 2020 / Jim / 0 Comments

WordPress is not a tool you can do a drive by with and easily figure it out. So here’s where I am with this site. JimMundy.com started out pure HTML and CSS living at 1and1 for hosting. Later I upgraded to 1and1 managed WordPress. I did a couple classes online to figure WordPress out. I was with 1and1 for a long time and other than cost I had no concerns. Then I got a call pretty much hard selling me to move to their hosting and CMS system. So it was time for a change.

Recently I purged a bunch of domain names to save some dollars and moved jimmundy.com domain over to namecheap.com. So being a total novice at WordPress I figured I’d get adventurous and created an AWS account and set up LightSail and WordPress on AWS. Might as well wing it with multiple platforms.

I did backup my site from 1and1; however, I realized I got the posts but none of the images. And that backup doesn’t save the theme. So I found my old theme, Hemingway, and loaded it up. And thats where I am today.

Next steps: tighten security, select plugins, figure out images, restore old posts.