Nowadays it seems that only lazy doesn't have personal page. So some time ago I and my brother decided to create personal site. I as being programmer of course wanted to create it by myself.

This entry opens up series of blog posts that describe various technical details about way how I have developed site you are browsing now. When I first thought that I should have my own web site I had general knowledge how web is working, and general idea how this site should look like, but I hadn't know enough those low-level details that are necessary to create something by yourself. I hope that my description help somebody who is in the same situation.

I knew that this site should fulfill following requirements:

• It should be dynamic. So if I need some sort of online application that helps me in my work I should be able to develop it by myself and deploy to the server.

• I want this site to be written in python, because this is my favorite programming language.
• I didn't want to develop it from scratch, instead it should be based on already existing framework or set of applications, because I haven't enough time to write all functionality by myself (even it is so easy to create frameworks in python) and I am quite lazy and want to use others people work instead doing something by myself :)

Server (hosting)

The first thing that is necessary for every site is server where it lives. Though there are some providers that offer python-hosting I've decided to maintain server by myself. At at the beginning this require more effort, but having your own server in the Internet has a lot of advantages:

• You can install any software you want and configure it for maximum flexibility.
• If there are some problems you can fix them immediately by yourself, instead waiting for provider's help. Though there are many people who would think about this fact as disadvantage :).

The best choice in such a situation is VPS: you don't need to think about hardware, but you have full control over software. VPS provider of my choice is UnixShell. I've chosen it, because

• They offer great service for acceptable price.
• Their site is simple (but changes very often :), free of various buzzwords and annoying ads and contains all necessary technical information that are interesting for people who know what they need.
• This was the only provider I've found that allows me to install gentoo linux as operating system of my VPS (more on this in the next posts).
• I like their name :)

That's all for now. In next entries I am going to describe details about registering domain name, isnstalling server software and choosing right python tools to develop this site.

Posted by on March 13, 2006  |  development, web

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