Apparently, a lifetime can be a bit over 3 years. That’s how much time has passed since my last update on a host change for my website. Back then, it was a significant migration as I switched platforms while moving to self-hosting. It seemed like a great lifetime deal, as I wouldn’t have to bother much with the infra and focus on posting (that I didn’t post much is another thing altogether). However, if it seems too good to be true, …
I received a notice that the web host was shutting down, which meant I needed to find a new home. For the previous setup, since it was shared WordPress hosting, I didn’t really have to bother much as everything was a turnkey solution, for better or for worse. However, this time, I decided to get my hands dirty and set everything up myself from scratch on a Virtual Private Server.
Now, this isn’t a particularly high-specced VPS, we are talking about, 1 vCore and 2 GB RAM, with few other things running beyond this website. Also, this one is based out of the UK whereas the previous one was geographically closer in Singapore. It implies that it isn’t really going to blow anyone’s pant’s off with its performance, but it also means I get to do whatever I want to with the server.
One significant upside of it is that I can focus a lot more on the security aspects. To that end, I am pretty chuffed at setting things up right to get an A+ on Security Headers as seen above, as well as an A+ on SSL Test as seen below.
Now, I don’t expect much out of this low-spec configuration, but I have optimized as much as someone one without spending considerable time on it. PageSpeed also displays everything in green as seen in the header image, which is nice as well.
Lastly, I decided to do so load testing with up to 1000 concurrent users for a minute, not that I expect this site to see that much traffic, but the average response of 244 ms isn’t too shabby, and the setup seems to be punching above its weight.
All in all, if I may say so, this is a pretty nifty setup for something that costs me annually about what a dozen of eggs did in the US at the beginning of the month. Touché!
