Log something crazy, but intresting.
Why is the self-hosted and self-developed site so important
Date:
I must stress the fact that everyone should have a personal site. That
site can be as small as a single page, just the about me page would be
fine. In today's day and time, I can not think of any reason not to have
a web presence. Let me tell you having yourself on social media
platforms is not enough, you need a personal space that you control. In
past, I have seen the rise and fall of social media sites and just
social media even the top multi-corporations in this space.
You must have heard that if a site is not charging you then you are the
product. It is very true I am just data for these corporations. What
happens to my data after 100 years, who would know? I just know one
thing, I should know how to have myself on the internet and have full
control over my data. I want to put my top reasons for having a
self-hosted and self-developed site on the web.
Product Life Cycle
The things that bring your presence on the web are products, you can
call them whatever but they have a life. Let us bring a few into the
picture, FaceBook, Linkedin, YouTube, WordPress and many more. All of
them are products and help us get our content across the web space. Now,
behind these products are corporations that need to make money to keep
going. If they don't have money they would take off the product from the
shelf. I don't want to create content just to see it go down, I want my
content to be there as long as I want it to be.
From the birth of the internet till date the only thing that has not
changed is a web site. Facebook is a website so is Linkedin and you are
currently a page inside that site. I would like to be a website than a
page inside someone else's site. I don't know when these corporations
will pull the plug on these sites, I have no control over them and I
wish not to be at their mercy. So, to have your own site which is
self-hosted and self-developed is the right choice.
Full Control of Data
When I am self-hosted I have full control over my data, I know what goes
across the web, what goes down and when it will go down. When you are
not self-hosted you just have one thing in your control when to upload.
Everything else is not in your hand, who sees what, where and when is
controlled by others, this is on the social sites. Sites like FaceBook,
YouTube, Twitter, and Medium have algorithms in place and their algo's
would then decide when and where your data is shown.
Let's say I upload a picture and then delete it, how can I be sure that
the picture is completely erased from someone else's server? I have zero
trust in the sites that don't charge you, I love free and open source
but I have no trust in them. They make you check a box at the end of the
registration, I have never read those terms and not because I am lazy
but because I won't understand them. I know if I upload a picture and
someone copies it and places it somewhere else I have no control over
that. But at least I know there is nothing in the source location.
Room to Grow
When you are self-hosted you have room to grow and if you are on a
self-developed site the growth can be accelerated even more. On a
self-developed site, you know the codes and backend, you are no longer
in an eco-system you are in the universe now. Just think about it people
go all out on the self-hosted WordPress but they should also know that
they are self-hosted but in a controlled eco-system. You can only be
free when you are self-developed then the options are limitless. Yes,
there will be small hiccups but you would be in full control.
If tomorrow WordPress open-source comes out with a statement that we no
longer will update or support the file, meaning we are closing down.
When would all these sites go which are running on this platform? That
is why it is always better to start something that you control and have
room to grow.
Look Professional and Gain Trust
The most difficult thing to earn in this world is trust, forget about
humans, Ai bots like Google don't even trust new and unprofessional
sites. How do gain the trust of humans and bots by being self-hosted,
having your own domain name, and having your individual IP address if
you are self-hosted you are spending some amount trying to build a brand
you are way more trustworthy than some free sub-domain brand.
Now when you are self-developed you would always stand out from the
crowd. That along with your own domain name would look way more
professional. Just the email address makes you stand out. Having a mail
address on your own domain seems very professional.
Gain Skill and Knowledge
Here is my story I have the .com version of the same domain hosted on
shared hosting and on WordPress, I know nothing about the backend server
configuration and WordPress code. According to the WP site health
status, ” The optional module, imagick, is not installed, or has been
disabled ”. I know I can just run a simple command “sudo apt install
php-imagick” but for shared hosting, I have to contact my server
administrator to do that. Look just by self-hosting on a VM I have
gained knowledge on what is a server install and what is WP install.
When I started this site I knew very little about HTML and had no skill
in coding I am a business management person but I learned this language
and added a small skill of web development. I learned something new and
interesting. We all should spend some time learning a new skill which
can be photography, painting, or playing an instrument. Just keep adding
knowledge which is everything.
Customization to Core
I am self-hosted on a VM and this site's code is written by me, I know
which code affects what function. The customization I can do is endless
for this site. You can not match it with shared hosting or content
management sites. I can change the code not worrying about the ecosystem
and who is affected.
I can stop the server, restart the machine, wipe every data in the
memory and start fresh. Not to forget I can scale the resources. When
you are on shared hosting that is a bit difficult you have to shift to a
different plan and shared server.
Vulnerable to Hackers
How vulnerable is my site to hackers? Less than my shared hosting and
WordPress site. The reason for that is there is no motive to hack. I
have to database on my server this is an HTML and CSS based site. The
only files on my server are the operating system, web server, HTML, CSS
and images. OS and the web server are open sources and the rest of the
files are public view. You don't need to hack into my system to copy
them.
For my other site, I have 4 connections and 4 passwords for the host,
the cPanel, the WordPress and the last Database. If anyone is
compromised I have an issue. In this site's case, there is just one of
my virtual machines and that's it that I have an f2a enabled.
That is correct everyone has backups if sites get hacked one can restore
from the backup stored. That brings me to the question of where the hack
came from. If the hack is in the code then the file you are restoring
might have the same code. On a self-develop site, you wrote the code
yourself so it is way easy to detect and remove the vulnerability when
you code yourself.
My Closing Thoughts
To be very honest it is a tough decision, I am very comfortable on the shared and WordPress site but I am also getting comfortable here on the VM. There are also other constraints that one should consider such as cost. Self-hosting with a domain name is not as cheap as shared hosting and non-self-hosting is free on WordPress, Blogger, Google Sites and more. I can only say one should have a web presence and full control over the data. One can always start with the free then gradually move on to self-hosted and then develop your own. I would suggest taking one step at a time and building your personal site and brand.
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