THE STORY OF THIS WEBSITE

A while back I came across a youtube video detailing how to setup a virtual private server in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) . Oracle have/had a lifetime free VPS offer with these specs:

1. 24GB RAM
2. 4 Cores ARM CPU
3. 200GB Space

Very generous of Oracle to say the least. By the way, they also offered $300 worth of credits to play around during the trial period.

The specs offered by OCI were more than enough to run a personal website and I promptly followed the youtube tutorial to setup an account in OCI and got myself a swanky, shiny new VPS with Ubuntu Server 22.04 installed. Check the screenshot below of the OCI website If interested you can give the free VPS a spin by clicking on the Try OCI for Free button. However in recent times Oracle seems to have restricted the doling out of free server resources. You can create an account with OCI, but when it comes to provisioning your compute instance Oracle says that server resources arent available at this time and you should try later. Apparently, some have tried for days but have not been able to get resources allocated. There are some videos that show workarounds but I do not know how effective they are.

Once the server was up and running I installed AaPanel, a free and fairly easy to use hosting panel. It provides a intuitive web interface to install software and manage the server. There is an alternative CyberPanel but I am yet to try. Perhaps in the near future Ill install it and put up a post comparing the two.

With Aapanel i was able to quickly get relevant software installed. It offers an “App Store” that lists software such as Apache, PHP, MySQL, PhpMyAdmin, Nodejs etc. all installable with a few clicks. Aapanel is basically free to use but they also offer a paid pro tier that provides support and other benefits.

Laravel has been my go to full stack development platform for a while now and it made sense to develop this site with the framework I was most comfortable in. So after a few days of hacking away at my keyboard on my trusted macbook air, I had me a basic preliminary website. I will admit portions of the site were “vibe coded” using AI tools. Harnessing the power of AI is the way to go and I am a firm believer that those with AI skills will be ones sought after in the workplace in the future. Much has been spoken about the disruption that AI will cause on the jobs front. While that may be true, I think new jobs involving the use of AI will be created.

Anyway, back the website. I decide to add a blog component where I could pen my thoughts and also use it as a documentation system to record the various activities I am involved it. The blog would primarily be a journal or a tutorial of sorts chroniciling the steps I took to accomplish things like configuring software or setting up of a network etc