Re: [tlug] Upgrading from CentOS 7

["Curt J. Sampson" <cjs@example.com>]

On 2025-03-09 14:54 +0900 (Sun), Charles Muller wrote:

> I am the owner of the site for the online Digital Dictionary of Buddhism
> (DDB; buddhism-dict.net)....our site is hosted with Linode.... We haven't
> had any problems with that, but we have been running as http rather than
> https, and we have pressure now to upgrade.
>
> It seems like in doing so, it is advisable to update the OS.

Like Steve, I'm a Debian guy, but there's nothing wrong (and perhaps for
you, a lot right) about continuing to stay with RH-style distros,
especially if you have folks like Brian here offering you support.

That said, this might also be an opportunity to look at how your website is
constructed and served and see if it's possible to move to a "static
site"[1] configuration (or one that is mostly such). These generally use a
static site generator[2] that turns files, things from a database,
whatever, into static web pages, often with additional JavaScript sent to
the client to make the site feel more "dynamic." If you really need to have
truly dynamic content, that's generally done with client-side JavaScript
calling an API server that is _much_ smaller and simpler than the full-on
systems that generate most everything dynamically.

Typically the source code for the generated site (e.g., CSS, JS,
Markdown[3] files for the text pages) is stored in a Git repo, which also
basically removes the need to do anything else for backups, lets you much
more easily track, review and authorise changes, and so on. (There's a bit
to learn about Git if you've never used it before, but if there are
technical people on your team, they probably already know how to use it can
can train and support the others. Git is not something only programmers can
use, though many developers apparently would like to think so. Especially
those who've spent many years creating poor, incomplete and buggy systems
to do the kinds of things that Git does. :-))

With systems like this you're generally not dealing with the
hosting—running the web server—yourself (though you still can do this), but
instead hand that work over to a service like Netlify or GitHub Pages where
you simply upload the site (either the source that they build or a copy
you've built yourself) and they handle all the service, including running
the web servers, setting up a CDN[4] for faster delivery of content,
dealing with DOS attacks or similar, automatically renewing your TLS
certificate, and so on. This is exactly how we run the TLUG website.[5]

It's generally not a trivial move, but the long term gains of having
someone else deal with all that sysadmin, many of the security issues and
so on are pretty big.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_web_page
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_site_generator
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network
[5]: https://github.com/tlug/tlug.jp

cjs
-- 
Curt J. Sampson      <cjs@example.com>      +81 90 7737 2974

To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
    - L Peter Deutsch