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| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +id: housekeeping-202425-3 |
| 3 | +blueprint: comment |
| 4 | +title: 'Housekeeping 2024/25 - 3' |
| 5 | +task: 'entry::housekeeping-202425' |
| 6 | +publication_date: '2025-01-27 09:55:40' |
| 7 | +--- |
| 8 | + |
| 9 | +Well, in the last update I mentioned you may be hearing from me once a week. And here we are, two weeks later 😅. I've been tinkering away for these two weeks, even though I got a cold and wasn't as productive, but the reason why I didn't write last week is that I wasn't finished with my main task: Rewriting this whole website from scratch! I've wanted to do it for a while, but I never had the time for it. |
| 10 | + |
| 11 | +One of the reasons why I hadn't updated yet is that my [Nova](https://nova.laravel.com/) license didn't support new Laravel versions :/. I bought mine [6 years ago](/tasks/brushing-up-noeldemartincom#comment-4), and I've been very happy with it... But honestly, I don't fancy paying 79$ (today, and every year!). Specially given that I don't want any new features. [I've rambled about subscriptions before](/blog/what-technology-wants#subscriptions), and even though this didn't look like one... it totally is. So yeah, I decided to ditch Nova in favor of... 🥁 [Statamic](https://statamic.com/)! |
| 12 | + |
| 13 | +I've known about Statamic for a while, but I didn't start paying it any attention until I took Jack McDade's [Radical Design](https://radicaldesigncourse.com/) course. It's not like the course has anything to do with it, but I liked his style so much that I decided to dig into his other projects. And I have to say, I love Statamic :D. It's a great CMS, with the full power of Laravel under the hood. And all the APIs and documentation are as good as any official Laravel package. But they do have the Jack McDade signature, which is nice. Like [funny comments throughout the documentation](https://statamic.dev/globals#blueprints-are-optional), or quirky design easter eggs (hover over that toucan in the homepage!). Also, they have a generous free tier for single-user websites. So it was the perfect choice. |
| 14 | + |
| 15 | +I also moved away from [StimulusJS](https://stimulus.hotwired.dev/), which I decided to try upon release but I haven't been super enthusiastic about. Instead, I started using [AlpineJS](https://alpinejs.dev/). I've been following [Caleb's work](https://notesonwork.com/) for years, and he's one of my favourite developers. But I was sad that I wasn't using any of his libraries... until now! Honestly, I haven't used it enough to have a strong opinion, but the few JS sprinkles I've written have been pretty straightforward :). |
| 16 | + |
| 17 | +Finally, something else I wanted to do with my website, was open source it. Which of course, I couldn't quite do with Nova. But I also wanted to move blog posts to a more contribution-friendly format, such as markdown files. And [Statamic supports it out of the box](https://statamic.dev/stache)! I don't expect anyone to actually contribute, but it's always nice to make things in accessible formats. And hey, it'd be nice if I get some typo fixed every now and then. |
| 18 | + |
| 19 | +If you're curious to dig into any of this, I'm happy to say that this site is now open source! You can head to GitHub and take a look: [github.com/noeldemartin/noeldemartin.com](https://github.com/noeldemartin/noeldemartin.com). |
| 20 | + |
| 21 | +Besides working on the website, I also did a couple other things. Mostly related to migrating out of the Digital Ocean droplet. And I think it's important that I mention an interaction I had online. When I talked about not upgrading my mastodon server for 6 years, [I was rightfully called out for being irresponsible ](https://noeldemartin.social/@[email protected]/113822701097773423). I wasn't trying to promote this mindset, but I shouldn't have been so nonchalant about it. The real reason why I hadn't updated in so long is that I was afraid :(. I've had bad experiences in the past when system upgrades broke my applications, and I was forced to spend some time either reverting the upgrade, or fixing my apps. But that's no excuse, and I will certainly try to do better from now on. |
| 22 | + |
| 23 | +Something I've already been doing to improve that situation is moving all my projects to Docker, with the architecture I previously referred to as "headless". I've created a tool for this called [Kanjuro](https://github.com/NoelDeMartin/kanjuro) (if you want to get the reference, you'll have to watch [Scabbard Samurai](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1748278/) :D). Most of my traumatic experiences happened because of dependency hell and PHP versions, but I haven't had any problems with this containerized approach, so it should be fine. I also started configuring [unattended upgrades](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-keep-ubuntu-20-04-servers-updated), and I'll make sure that things stay up to date. |
| 24 | + |
| 25 | +So yeah, maintenance burden sucks, and it's definitely the worst part of self-hosting and working in open source. But it's part of the deal, so I may as well suck it up and get my act together. Thanks Angelo for bringing it up! |
| 26 | + |
| 27 | +Now that we've got that out of the way, I'm happy to say that I only have one service running on that legacy Digital Ocean droplet. [My personal Solid POD](/tasks/configuring-a-self-hosted-solid-pod-server). And yes, it is running a very outdated [NSS 5.2.2](https://github.com/nodeSolidServer/node-solid-server/releases/tag/v5.2.2) server 🙈. The good news is that this really is something I'm only using myself, and it doesn't interact with other servers or has anyone else's data like Mastodon. Regardless, I want to migrate it as well. |
| 28 | + |
| 29 | +For a long time, I was thinking I would just set up a [CSS](https://github.com/CommunitySolidServer/CommunitySolidServer) instance. But I've decided to keep pushing [LSS](https://github.com/noelDeMartin/lss) for my own usage. I've been using Media Kraken exclusively with it for a couple of weeks, and the experience has been great :D. I'm already using Umai elsewhere (with the [Solid Community POD](https://solidcommunity.net/)), so the only one left is Solid Focus. Which is a perfect segway to the next thing I'll work on: getting the Focus revamp out of the door! I still haven't heard from NLNet, so I'm not sure how much I'll work on Aerogel or not. But in any case, I'll do this as part of [the other task I already have ongoing](tasks/making-a-web-application-framework). |
| 30 | + |
| 31 | +So that's it for this task! Enough housekeeping, time to start working on some real stuff. |
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