Well after a lot of research and hard work the server's ready to drop off at colocation. There's still some grey areas but in all everything looks ready to go, better off there and running than sitting it home waiting.

So tomorrow I'll be driving down to RapidSwitch in Slough to drop it off, after which Michelle wants us to visit her grandparents who live in Farnborough; not far off from the facility.

Here's a quick rundown of the spec:

• O/S: Debian Etch 4.0 64-bit
• HDD: Software RAID 1 - 1TB
• MEMORY: 4GB Corsair
• CPU: AMD AM2 2+ghz
• BANDWIDTH: 3TB per month

Bit of a step up from the virtual server environment I get from SliceHost, but fingers crossed it should all go fine; had so much fun putting it together already planning the next incarnation ;-)

P.S.

Dark Knight is really really good, Heath Ledger has pulled off such a believable and terrifying character; have to see it again.

Update

Just got back from her grandparents; boy do they know how to cook a sunday lunch, lovely couple.

Server's online, it's stopped resyncing the raid drives thankfully, was a little worried about that but everythings loaded running and operating well.

Cat sitting next weekend, let's hope mickey isn't in one of his moods ;-)

All the best, have a great week people.

Decided to push the envelope a bit more and give my experimental web apps a little bit more power under the hood, 512mb can be a strain.

So today we're running under a 1GB Slice from SliceHost + nightly backups.

Big difference.

P.S.

This is for my mum, she like Mr Walken. cool cat.

Looking back on the server logs it suddenly dawns on me, my pride and joy is now 5 years old, party!!!

That’s some History…

It’s been a rollercoaster ride. This site’s first incarnation appeared back on a very early incarnation of Blogger before Google bought them out. Then under the guise of wolfsclaw.com on a UK hoster running PHP 4 and Textile, then off to TextDrive PHP 5 and Wordpress for a while. Then over to DreamHost then MediaTemple Grid-Server → full DV box.

Now finally it’s sitting on it’s own custom Linux VPS server under Xen virtualisation, running Ruby on Rails with professional-grade deployment and load-balancing nodes. All made possible by SliceHost

It’s been quite a ride but I’ve enjoyed it and have no intention of letting up just yet.

Why do it?

I originally started the blogging idea as a means of putting myself out there, finding new friends, colleagues and quasi-self-promotion. But it’s thankfully grown away from that and now whenever I solve something difficult or write up some crackin’ solution it goes here.

I work on the notion if it’s helpful to me then it’s probably helpful to someone else out there, and if I end up making someone’s day then that’s thanks enough.

Still no Ad’s!

Yep I’m still sticking with my policy of no ad’s or annoying popups on the site, financing it out of my own pocket for the greater good.

Hackers go Bye Bye!

And having had no major break-ins or take downs in it’s history, life’s been mighty nice.

I’ve implemented load balancing on the web server to keep the Digg effect from happening and have a nice pool of bandwidth and processor resources and nightly disk imaging to keep things secure and bullet-proof.

Numbers?

If your interested, the logs suggest around 3,000 visitors a day, averaging 60,000 a month. Google Analytics tracks the details for me and sends a graphical chart each month, so far 200 goal achivements per month can’t be bad!.

Looking forward to the next 5!

Take care all,

‘Goodnight and Good Luck’

DNS = Domain Naming Service
p. …quite simply the glue that ties your newly purchased .com to your server’s hardware.

There’s a few other bits to it, like the Name Server, or the original Domain Name Registrar (e.g. godaddy.com); they’re a little more involved but I’ll try to cover them here.

Buying your Domain Name

First off, go buy your new domain name at one of the domain name registrars. I’ve suggested godaddy.com purely because they’re so cheap, but you can use any other.

Next once you’ve bought your domain name, go in and you’ll be able to point it to a naming server. This connects your .com to the server containing your dns details and thus to your meat & potatoes server box.

So for this example, we’ll use SliceHost (although you can use the free DNS provider FreeDNS who provide the service free of charge, I’ve used and are really good.

Go to your DNS provider and they’ll provide you with a list of nameservers you can use.

e.g.
bq. ns1.slicehost.net
ns2.slicehost.net
ns3.slicehost.net

Go to your domain registrar and in the nameserver provider part, enter these three (3 for automatic failover, one fails the other takes charge, etc.).

Creating your DNS records

Now we’ve got the .com pointed to the DNS provider that will host our DNS records, let’s go create some.

So, for SliceHost, go to the DNS Records section, click ‘advanced view’ (specifically for slicehost); and now We’ll begin.

Create a record for each one of these

type: A

name: www

data: (ip address of your serverbox)

type: A

name: mysite.com.

data: (ip address of your serverbox)

Note the . at the end of the one above (DNS records always have a fullstop at the end), and that it doesn’t have www. at the start.

Next we need to tie the domain name to the name server for a sort-of reverse lookup. So create records like…

type: NS

name: mysite.com.

data: ns1.slicehost.net.

type: NS

name: mysite.com.

data: ns2.slicehost.net.

type: NS

name: mysite.com.

data: ns3.slicehost.net.

Notice the fullstop at the end of the Name and Data part.

Unfortunately now we have to wait for these settings to propogate thru the web, can take up-to 48 hours but usually quicker (try doing this at midnight in the UK).

Using Google Apps for your Email

Now we’ve got the site hooked up to the server box, how about email?. Well, you could install an exchange mail server on your box but they’re usually a nightmare for the beginners; so how about we use Google Apps & GMail?.

Google Apps is a new free service google has launched to provide home users and small business with a way of having standard google tools but tied to their domain name. So you can have john@mysite.com be your email address but use Google GMail to handle it without building an exchange server; big headache gone.

Go to the Google Apps website and register for the free Standard service. Use your new domain name mysite.com and create an email account for it.

You’ll need to verify your site with Google to turn the service on, quickest method is to put an HTML file on your server’s /public web directory and click VERIFY.

Once done go back to SliceHost / Your DNS provider and create a new record,

type: MS

name: mysite.com.

data: ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.

auxilary info: 1

..the 1 is the priority level, Google will probably tell you to create more of these but for now one will do.

Now once google shows your site as Verified all the services (calendar, excel, start page, etc.) will switch to Active. Setup your Email part and tell it you’ve done the MX record change and it’ll switch to Updating. Now wait 3-48 hours for it to check the MX record on your DNS provider.

If all ok, that’ll go to Active, send an email to the address to check and it should work.

Using shorter URLs for Google Apps

As you’ll have worked out, Google doesn’t give you the best web addresses to access your Google Apps email, docs, etc.

To make this more simple, go to each service in your Google Apps Dashboard and click ‘change url’, pick the one it gives you (usually mail.[mysite.com], etc. ) and click ok.

It will then tell you how to adjust your DNS settings appropriately, but to make this simpler, login to your DNS control panel in SliceHost (or whatever DNS service your using) and add some CNAME aliases.

type: CNAME

name: mail

data: GHS.GOOGLE.COM.

type: CNAME

name: start

data: GHS.GOOGLE.COM.

type: CNAME

name: docs

data: GHS.GOOGLE.COM.

type: CNAME

name: calendar

data: GHS.GOOGLE.COM.

CNAME records basically act like an alias pointing to your core domain. So adding a record with a name of ‘mail’ will suddenly redirect anything with mail.mysite.com to the location you put in data. Once done, it should take effect in 1-3 hours.

Final Points

A name records are much like CNAME records only they have a lesser performance impact, however if you are gonna create some more like blog.mysite.com I’d stick to CNAME’s; only create one A record for your www => www.mysite.com connection.

Drop me a line if you get stuck,

All the best,

John.