After a long time of using tools like GitHub pages and looking for
someone to host my little virtual home, I've decided to go the way of
the selfhost.... well almost, a VPS which is pretty much the same
thing. My motivation was mainly to have much more control over the tools
I use in the virtual world, like git servers, mail servers and more, and
in the process learn how a web server works.
I already had a domain name for almost a year, so what I was missing
was the server. Sadly I can't afford to set one up at home, so I
decided to rent a VPS for only 3.70 dollars a month, that's about 70
Mexican pesos. Come on, I spend more on a snack on the weekend.
Setting it up was quite simple, although I must say that I was guided
entirely by Luke Smith's youtube videos, where he shows us step by
step how to set up a web server with nginx. A little bit of research
(i.e. the HexDSL video) led me to set up the gemini server using
Agate. Actually it was very simple, I have currently running a web
server, a mail server (not functional right now, because they have
blocked my SMTP port until a month has passed, to confirm that it is
not spam according to them), a git server, and I'm planning on setting
up my own cloud with NextCloud. All for 70 pesos a month, and with the
advantage that I have complete control over what happens on the
server.
Since I want to have both a web page and a gemini capsule, and I don't
want to write the same thing twice in two different markup languages,
I decided to look for a way to write everything in a common language
(markdown for example) and then export it to both a web page and the
gemini capsule. After a bit of searching on "converters" and possible
static site generators I discovered `org-publish', a function of
`org-mode' that allows to export .org files and generate complete
projects, be it web sites or books in LaTeX or whatever you want.
With this in mind and a bit of trial and error with lisp, I managed to
have what I currently have: a simple, plain page and the gemini
capsule, both generated thanks to a series of org-mode files. Is there
anything Emacs can't do?
I have to keep refining details yet, but I think it's already at a
level to show it to the public. Let's see how it works and what other
curious things I can do with the VPS, for the moment it seems that my
synchronization and mail needs are solved, so I can say goodbye to
Gmail and G-drive for the moment.