The new lvacula.com – Docker, WordPress, and More

Today marks the start of the new lvacula.com.

I bought this domain several years ago to serve as a domain for email and a website. Since then, it’s gone through several changes. For a while it ran on an old x86 (32-bit) laptop at college. Later it ran on Google Cloud. For a while it had WordPress, then WordPress and Nextcloud. At one point it was a HTML-and-CSS-only static site. Now it’s time for a new chapter: the Docker era.

All of the services on this domain are now running in Docker containers. The reason for doing this was twofold:

• My previous VPS had a logging issue that caused the CPU, memory, and disk usage to spike at random times. A member of Google’s staff confirmed that the OS agent was the issue. It was easier to start from scratch than to fix the issue because the system would entirely lock up at random times.
• Docker and containerization is commonly used nowadays, and it would be a good skill to learn.

After a few days of figuring out docker-compose, certain features of NGINX, and how to avoid pulling my hair out while editing YAML files, I finally have a setup that works.

The Other Changes

With rebuilding and using Docker comes several other changes:

I reduced the size of the VPS disk from 120 GB to 40 GB. Originally, I was using the Nextcloud service in the VPS as a backup service despite it being a file sync/cloud storage service. I now have a proper backup solution in place so the extra space is no longer needed. I’ll still use it to sync or store important files from multiple locations, but that’ll be it. And to be clear for anyone else: don’t use Nextcloud as a backup solution. Use something like borg.

I also switched from Rocky Linux to CentOS Stream. There wasn’t a particularly strong reason for this other than to change to a new system.

The biggest change for anyone other than me is the move from a static front page to WordPress. I want to get back into blogging.

The Services

For anyone who’s curious, here’s a full list of the frontend services I’m running:

• WordPress as a blogging engine/CMS, as well as the front page of the website.
• MediaWiki as a semi-public knowledge base for myself and others. Link: wiki.lvacula.com
• Nextcloud as a personal file sync system.
• FreshRSS as an RSS reader.
• Shaarli as a place to save bookmarks and notes.