What is this website? How do I have my own website? Isn’t this expensive? Why do I have my own website? This article will more or less explain those and many other questions you may have. However, this will be the more technical, jargon-plagued version of that explanation. For the philosophical justification, I’ll likely write about that in the future, so stay tuned.
So what is this site? About 4 years ago, I watched a video on YouTube of a man using a palm-sized computer to run his own game console in a Mentos tin, compatible with any handheld game on earth. In my excitement and haste for a new project to consume my time over quarantine, I asked my mom to get the computer for me at the store the following day, a Raspberry Pi 3b. After learning what soldering is, and finding out that constructing a handheld console from scratch requires more than just a tin and a computer, my dreams were all but crushed. Youthful me did not have the patience or materials to complete any of the results for “what to do with my raspberry pi 3?”
Fast-forward to November of this year. Sitting in my room alone on a call with my friend, he pitches me his idea of running an AI assistant locally on a handheld computer. Immediately I recall my ownership of just that, which had been lying dormant in my bedside drawer for the better part of the last 4 years. Upon realizing this, I immediately began searching for all available projects with such an outdated device. Due to budget concerns, the universally recommended “touchscreen mirror” and “miniature robot” were more or less out of the window. However, this led me to research the server capabilities of the Pi. Nextcloud was more or less unnecessary due to the existence of Google Drive, and a media server would serve me no better purpose than my single, streaming-service-equipped smart TV already had. Out of better options, I discovered that using the wireless capabilities of the Pi 3b, and the generally low computing requirement, it was possible to run a web server off of my device.
Using my prior experience managing WordPress sites, I undertook the goal of creating a personal website that would run publicly under a real “.com” domain name—a feat I had previously only thought capable of businesses and larger organizations or those with the money to pay for hosting. Using various web tutorials and ChatGPT as my personal troubleshooter, I set up a modified LAMP server (technically LNMP would be the proper term) and installed the latest version of WordPress onto my device.
My Pi in its original form, bound to lay on a sheet of static shielding plastic.
Initially, the hardest part of setting up the web server was moving from visual file interfaces like Windows File Explorer to the text-bound Powershell/SSH interface. However, with the help of a wide library of resources on the topic, it was a breeze to set up Nginx and use MariaDB to manage a local MySQL database.
For the first couple of weeks, it was smooth sailing, as I used the Pi’s local IP to connect and manage this site’s primordial form. Building this site’s theme, arranging plugins and CSS, and writing the first couple of articles were generally some of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had during my many projects throughout the years. It was a nearly parental experience, seeing a little board maybe 5 inches long running something as fantastical and grand as a standalone, locally hosted website, all for the $30 pricetag of the Pi alone. My enthusiasm, to my great pleasure, was met with nothing but support from those around me, who gave me the confidence and drive to continue this project and bring it to what it is now.
Out of that support, for Christmas, my parents were graceful enough to purchase a small case for my Pi to manage all of my thermal concerns, and give me a small stipend to rent a domain for my site for its first year. However, moving the site from local to public was a far greater task than any I had met in my time with my Pi. Managing Xfinity’s abhorrent “Net Security” and faulty port forwarding, and troubleshooting CertBot to generate a working SSL certificate to allow my domain to correctly redirect captured most of my Christmas day in Powershell hell. But at exactly 10:48 PM on December 25th, 2024, sickofmeaning.com successfully delivered its homepage to a non-local IP. And now you’re reading this, probably not connected to my home network. Funny how things work out, huh?
My Pi as of the launch of sickofmeaning.com
Above is a picture of my Pi in his brand new case, chugging away and running this site for all of you. Cute, right? And if you’ve read this far, his name is Icebox, and he’s what the right sidebar text is referring to. I’ll let you figure out why he’s called Icebox.