I constantly find myself needing to write down some obscure steps to accomplish a technical goal. Whatever I’m after usually only needs to be done once, and is forgotten by the time I need it again (or when i mention it to someone else who is interested). Usually, re-googling is enough to solve the problem. But sometimes the specific setup being used requires a hybrid of obvious answers, or a little extra knowledge not captured in regular posts.
So, this whole thing exists to put that information on the internet, to fill in the blanks where the previous published knowledge isn’t quite there.
In the past, I’dve advised asking an informational question on the appropriate StackExchange site. However, I’m one of those insufferable people who has cultural, ethical, moral and legal concerns about how that site is operated by its new management, their increasingly money-focused actions, and the ownership’s hostility towards the community management and original goal of the site.
Given the lack of places where this kind of technical knowledge can be entrusted; it’s more responsible to publish the information myself, direct people towards specific posts, and for everyone else - hope that search engines index it properly. Which is how the whole Internet was always supposed to work.
On a technical level for this site itself, the static content is hosted on nginx, and i wrote some middleware that on-the-fly converts markdown-to-html (using this). The posts are on the same server, and the folder they live in are shared by webdav - so that i can create/edit posts from anywhere without needing to run any after-the-fact processes, or fighting with a CMS.
While this whole setup was made in 2019, Fabien Sanglard recently jotted down an extremely similar set of principles that I have, when setting this up.