Contrary to superficial appearances on this here blog, I’ve not been a layabout, in recent weeks. I’ve been quite productive in the sphere of website building and administrative work.
This spurt of productivity was impelled by a request from the owners of the gift shop, where I work part-time. They wanted me to build them an improved website for their “other business” – a cabin rental business for tourists in Klawock.
That website is now “live” and running well, hosted on one of my servers – same as this blog and all my other various web projects. You can visit that website: aplacetostayinak.com.
This work has led to a whole host of ancillary projects, as I try to clean up and update my several servers. I felt that if I was actually going to start being paid for what has so long been a hobby, I should get my proverbial ducks in a row.
By far the most difficult thing I’ve done wasn’t building that new website, but rather it was rebuilding, from the bottom up (i.e. from bare-bones, brand new “blank” server) my “map server,” which I’ve mentioned many times here. This has been necessary since my giant server crash a few months ago, and having the old server running, with all its problems and wasted space, was very inefficient. By doing this, I could free up a lot of space for new projects without shelling out for another new server. It was quite a job, and I’m proud of the outcome, though it’s the least glamorous, since in fact the objective was to get it looking and behaving exactly as the old map server. So if you go to my map server, at its new address, you’ll see something exactly the same as my old map server (which I have now shut down). The new map server is: arhet.rent-a-planet.com.
Another difficult thing I accomplished is that I have finally built my own email server – after many years of wanting to. Nothing will change as far as reaching out to me. I haven’t “killed” any of my existing email addresses, and my gmail one remains my “primary.” But having my own email server simplifies website administration and hosting substantially – a website server produces a number of automated, administrative emails, in the vein of responses to “Lost your password?” queries or “Server backup job completed at 07:00 AKDT”. It is actually pretty hard to get such emails to go out correctly when you don’t control your own email host. So I built one. I placed it on one of my many domains: craig-alaska.net.
As a side note, therefore, if anyone who knows me wants a customized email address, I now have the ability to provide that. The email server includes a “webmail” interface, so if you really wanted to, and trusted me enough, you could throw away your gmail account and be fulano@craig-alaska.net (or any of my other domains, or your own if you want to buy one).
I also set up a blog for a neighbor and good friend of Arthur’s, Jeff. He hasn’t done much with it, but I’m going to be providing him with some orientation so he can get his blog started: akjeff.com
Having done all that, and thinking about the fact that I am earning money from a few of these web programming adventures (though not at all breaking even, yet), I decided it was time to declare my web design and hosting “business” in some kind of official way. So I built yet another website, which is my “business” – such as as stands. Currently the income is less than the cost of the servers I have. Not to mention the programming time is, so far, “free.” I’m doing it as a hobby, I guess, but if I’m going to be making some money with it, I might as well try to look professional.
That new website: raggedsign.com. I would welcome feedback on appearance and text – it’s quite rudimentary and “first draft,” right now.
“raggedsign” is a name I came up with in around 2001 or 2002, as a kind of “brand name” for my efforts at learning website design and web programming. It went into extended dormancy during my decade in Korea and I only recently decided to resume using it for the same, original purpose. I have also used the brand-name “general semiotics” for my computer-related work, specifically my year and a bit as an independent “database design consultant” in 2006-07. I still own that domain, too, and for now I’ve redirected generalsemiotics.net to the raggedsign site.
My next project is to provide a new “Topo layer” for the opengeofiction.net site where I am still active, bearing an informal “administrator emeritus” title. The previous “Topo layer” for that site was deactivated due to performance issues, but I have always been one of its biggest users and fans. So rather than complain to the other admin people on that site about the now-missing topo layer, I thought I’ll take on hosting one, myself – if I can. There are some technical hurdles to be overcome. But I think I’ll manage it.
