skippy dot net

I've made a number of substantial changes to the way I host skippy.net through the years. I started out hosting on an old server in my bedroom, attached to my DSL line. I eventually got tired of dealing with hardware, and moved to a virtual private server at Tektonic. I was reasonably happy with that arrangement: it gave me full root access on my own server, and freed me from having to worry about hardware maintenance. Tektonic was, in fact, my second choice for VPS hosting. My first choice was Slicehost, but at the time there was a waitlist for new customers.

Eventually I got to the head of the line at Slicehost, created my Slice, and moved my sites over to a VPS hosted there. I was more than happy: the service was extremely reliable and the pricing was perfectly fair. I've enjoyed using -- and recommending -- Slicehost for about a year now.

In the decade that I've been running skippy.net, I've added and removed a bunch of other non-web services. I started out hosting all my own email, and managing my own anti-spam configurations. Almost two years ago I migrated to Google for Domains, and have been extremely happy to be out of the email management business. I ran a number of mailing lists via GNU Mailman at various times, but have moved many of those over to Google Groups. I currently run a private Subversion repository to track some of the side projects on which I work, but have been committing changes less and less frequently.

Currently, the only things I regularly use are web applications: this blog, and blogs for friends and family. This leads me to ask the question: why am I paying for -- and maintaining -- a complete virtual private server? I'm certainly not getting my money's worth these days.

So yesterday I began looking in earnest at shared hosting. Rather than manage my own complete server, my little websites would be just that many more sites hosted on some big server farm somewhere. It's a somewhat daunting process to find a reputable shared host. Everyone's needs are a little different, and the service offerings are all just a little different from one another, so there's few real apples-to-apples comparisons available. I have a pretty good idea of how much disk space I need, and how much bandwidth I'll consume on a monthly basis, so that's an easy metric to use when comparing shared hosting plans. I'll have to make do with whatever control panel is offered to me. I'm not thrilled about using CPanel, or any other control panel, but I realize that's the nature of the game when I switch to shared hosting.

I'd love shell access, which I'm told is offered by some shared hosting companies if you simply ask for it. I suspect it's a chargeable add-on from other hosts. If I have shell, I'd really like access to the Subversion client tools, so that I can check out the latest versions of Habari directly to the server, rather than to my laptop, then upload the files from my laptop to the server.

Aside: I wrote "my server" instead of "the server" several times in the preceding paragraph. That shows how deeply ingrained my sense of ownership in my hosts has been over the years. It will, no doubt, take some time to get used to using a shared host.

I keep looking at the option to pay extra for a dedicated IP address, so that I can install an SSL certificate. I like the idea of HTTPS, especially when accessing the admin side of this blog from an untrusted network, but really -- it's just a blog. I'm not doing e-commerce, so HTTPS is probably one of those things to which I've grown accustomed without really having a need.

I've heard as many complaints as I have praises for Dreamhost. The same holds true for MediaTemple. Given the number of complaints generated by people I know personally, I think I can safely discard these two as options. I've heard a limited number of complaints against A Small Orange over the years, and a great many positive things. Given their longevity and the ratio of praise to complaint, I'm reasonably comfortable selecting them as one of my top candidates.

And at the end of the day, the process of switching from one shared hosting provider to another is substantially easier than switching from one VPS to another, so it's not like I'm committed for all of eternity to whatever host I select. In the latter instance, I need to build up the server and tweak its configuration to my standards. This takes time, but it ensures that I get exactly what I want, every time. In the case of shared hosting, I get what the host offers me, which may or may not be what I want. Case in point: A Small Orange runs CentOS for their servers, which means I'm stuck with PHP version 5.2.11. I've been used to PHP 5.3 on Debian for some time now. It's a small point to quibble, but a number of small points can slowly add up to become a very big problem on the whole.

I'm still looking at hosting providers. If you use one, and are happy with it, please tell me so in the comments. I'm not in any particular rush to move things around, so I'd like to take my time to make sure I find a host with which I'll be happy.

I've been looking at outsourcing my email, and after writing that post I signed up for the Google for Domains service. What follows are my initial thoughts now that I've started using it, as well as some suggestions based on my experiences thus far (mostly aimed toward my family, who are now also using Google for Domains).

The Google Control Panel is extremely easy to use. It took me all of four minutes to get things set up. Google makes it easy for you to use links to your own domain in order to access their services, and they even provide to you the necessary DNS changes in order to support those custom URLs. So instead of http://mail.google.com/a/example.com, you can use http://mail.example.com. The same goes for docs.example.com and calendar.example.com. Adding and managing users is similarly easy.

I selected Google for Domains primarily for their email service, so that I can stop managing my own MTA and anti-spam tools, so that was the bit in which I was the most interested. I host a handful of domains for my family, and I wanted to make sure all their vanity email accounts remained. Thankfully, the Google control panel allows you to associate additional domains to the primary domain, and again they provide instructions for setting up the DNS MX records as needed. The one catch to this is that an email address is valid across all the domains you define. So if I define domains example.com and example2.com, email sent to user1@example.com and user1@example2.com will be delivered to the same user. This isn't a big deal for me, but it might be a gotcha for others.

I've been accessing my email for the last several years by IMAP, using Mozilla Thunderbird. I have a handful of folders into which I organize my mail. Not having spent much time with GMail in the past, I was a little worried about workflow changes that might be required of me. In particular, I was worried that all the thousands of messages I've been saving over the years would be stored in one gigantic Inbox, and I'd see the gigantic list of messages every time I logged in. Thankfully this was not the case, and importing all of my old mail into Google Mail was an easy (if extremely slow) process.

Google's web-based mail system does not use folders like Thunderbird; instead it uses labels. Labels are just that: it's a term you apply to a message. You can then filter the list of messages you see in the web-based interface by label. Messages can have more than one label, which provides some additional organization convenience over folders, since a message can only be stored in a single folder at a time (unless you copy it into multiple folders, but then deleting the message from one folder will not automatically delete it from other folders into which it might have been copied).

By default, messages do stay in the Inbox, even after you label them. It's easy to move old messages from the Inbox, though, through the use of the Archive button. When a message is marked "archive" it is removed from the Inbox, but remains accessible through search and label filtering, as well as the special "All Mail" display. In essence, labeling a message and then pressing "Archive" is the same as moving a message into an IMAP folder.

Google Mail does provide IMAP access, so you can use a traditional mail client if you prefer. Importing messages requires that you connect via IMAP. When accessing your mail via IMAP, the labels you created are presented as IMAP folders. If you place messages into the Google Inbox, they will be visible in the Inbox when using the web-based interface, as well. If you place messages directly into a Google label-as-IMAP-folder, it will acquire the appropriate label and be automatically archived, preventing it from being displayed in the Inbox. So the process of importing all my old mail was simple: define a new IMAP account in Thunderbird for Google Mail and then copy messages from my old IMAP folders into the corresponding Google label-as-IMAP-folder. I elected to create the labels in the Google web interface ahead of time, for no particular reason. I assume you can create new labels-as-IMAP-folders using Thunderbird and have that work the same as if you create the label first.

Switching to the web-based interface for Google Mail will take some work, but I've already found a compelling reason to make it worth my time. Using filters I can apply labels to messages as they come in. Then, I need only click the "Archive" button when I'm done reading to have those messages automatically filed. This is a terrific way to streamline the organization of my messages. When using Thunderbird, I'd have to manually move each message (or selected group of messages) to the appropriate folder. I would often miss the intended destination folder, and end up filing messages in the wrong location. Using Google Mail, I can ensure that mail ends up where it needs to go before it even comes in to me! All my mailing list messages are now labeled automatically, as well as mail from my family. I only ever need to click the "Archive" button now, which makes for a pretty easy to remember workflow.

I installed the FireGPG plugin in order to be able to use GPG signing and encryption from within my web browser (although I hardly ever encrypt anything, much to my disappointment). I'm now skimming the list of Greasemonkey scripts for GMail and will probably also investigate a few Firefox add-ons to see if there are additional ways to make my Google experience even better.

So far, I'm pleased with what Google offers, and I'm happy to get out of the mail administration game. I'll soon be able to downgrade the VPS service I use, since I no longer need the additional memory or disk for email processing and storage. I'm looking forward to sharing a calendar with Carina. And while I doubt I'll make use of the Google Docs service, it's nifty to know that it's available to me should I find a need.

For many years I've been an ardent supporter of the "do it yourself" approach for server management. I used to run all of my websites and mail servers from my personal DSL line using a computer in my spare bedroom. Earlier this year, I finally got fed up tending to the hardware and purchases a VPS account at TekTonic. This has served me better than I expected, and I've felt extremely liberated not having to fuss with hardware.

I'm growing increasingly tired, now, of managing my mail services. It's no longer interesting to me to keep up with the latest anti-span tactics, or to restart the mail services when they fail for whatever reason. As such, I'm seriously considering letting someone else manage my email services for me.

I know several people who use -- and rave about -- webmail.us. I'm comfortable paying for someone else' expertise in email management, so I'm willing to fork over a couple bucks a month for a reliable email system I don't need to babysit.

I also see that Google for Domains is available to me, and for free. I'm not entirely keen on the idea of letting Google hold all of my email (plus all my family members' emails), but I'm not so opposed to that idea as to rule out Google altogether.

A quick skim of some of the reviews of Google For Domains suggests that it should be satisfactory for my needs, and will offer a number of additional benefits which may or may not be useful to the family (shared calendar, for example). I think I might give it a shot...