Why I Went Back To A VPS

This is not a knock on NameCrane. The service was great for my web hosting when I wanted it to just work. I have not kept it a big secret that my head was preoccupied for a bit. Running a VPS does take some maintenance to keep it updated and stuff. That is the part I normally enjoy. I had just noticed I wasn’t paying enough attention to that aspect back in 2024. Sure, it just worked, but there could have been something that came up that I missed.

The cPanel web hosting service that I used took all of that away. It just worked, and I could reasonably expect it to continue to do so with no intervention by me. That convenience was worth something for a while.

The thing is, I do not like cPanel. I am not a fan of the interface. I had also tried the DirectAdmin version they had too, but I wasn’t much of a fan of that either.

Admittedly, I have also missed the tinkering with the workings of the server. Occasionally I like tweaking things and trying out new ideas and stuff. Ideally, that is transparent to anyone that might happen to look at this.

Having the VPS allows me to control what is even installed and available. I have no PHP even installed. Obviously shared hosting has it because most people use WordPress. Some high amounts of traffic I get are people scanning for WordPress files I am sure to use vulnerabilities. I don’t recall the actual number, but I know a high amount of the websites on the net use WordPress these days.

With PHP not even being installed, I don’t have to think about something inadvertently happening. They also had the Python stuff installed and available, which I was not too keen on either. Great if you want to use that stuff, but I don’t want to myself.

On my own, I make every domain a separate user. I think I could do that with a reseller account on cPanel, but I didn’t want to pay more. I did not look too deeply into the possibilities of doing that with shared hosting since I knew it was temporary for me to use that option.

A good portion of the joy I get out of having my site up is the fiddling around with various things. I like dabbling with stuff that is visible here, like the layout and stuff like that, as much as I enjoy messing with the behind-the-scenes stuff. Personally, I learn by doing, and learning is something I enjoy immensely. I hope to never allow myself to stop learning new things.

By having a VPS, I am protected from others a little more than on shared hosting. More importantly, others are protected from my inevitable fuckups. Every so often I break things.

This whole post is a long and wordy way of saying I am having fun again.