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More post-by-email tests – Showing full posts roadblock

I’d been meaning to investigate a way of showing these posts (which are now successfully coming in via email updates), as full posts on this front page.

A pandemic gave me the perfect opportunity to pick up where I left off and try to fix the issue.
It looks like it’s not as simple as I thought – The default theme i’m using (twentyseventeen) asks you to pick either a static front page (which I had previously for contact details) or a ‘posts page’ where full posts are shown instead of excerpts.
This can be switched using the following menu –
Wordpress TwentySeventeen theme posting options.png
I’m sure there is a workaround and no doubt a bit of unpicking the code would give a decent solution but for now this will do.
I may use a ‘pinned’ post to outline what the site is about which my previous layout did in pretty simple terms.
Hopefully this will be the start of a bit more tinkering again now i’m house bound like the rest of country.
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Post 3 – VM usage £££

This is what it looks like on my VM usage when I started editing my site and adding custom pages inside the Apache folder over a 30 minute period. Interesting ey?



This isn’t looking too good! What happens if i get pen tested??

That is all.

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Post 2 – Site setup

Background: I ran some virtual machines on cloud platforms in my last job for a few different projects. I decided hosting my own site seemed like a good idea as an area I could blog, sell myself and more importantly- test things out… Mostly simple webdev.

I used Azure, AWS and Google Cloud and the learning curve on Google was much, much lower as far as I was concerned so I stuck with it.

Step 1. I tried the process of building a LAMP stack with WordPress on the VM step by step but essentially I’m bad at following lots of instructions even though they are well documented.

Somehow I kept locking myself out of the required SQL database (or some similar other error). After a few attempts I accidentally came across a pre-configured WordPress VM which you can deploy in one click (pretty much).

It.was.easy. I used this excellent guide [link].

Step 2. This setup gets you up and running nice and quick. Simpletons like me can then use the GUI at http://example.com/wp-admin to make something fairly presentable in little time.

However; this is only a HTTP setup without SSL. For HTTPS I opted for Let’s Encrypt. I don’t have time for the ins and outs so I used this amazing guide [link].

And that’s about it… A blogable, presentable site in no time.

Lessons learned-

1. It seems hosting with Google may get expensive. I’m running a small VM and the site is not in constant use but I’ve had my first bill and it’s more than I was expecting. I’ll monitor this.

2. I made a tiny error that had me scratching my head for ages when setting up Let’s Encrypt. It’s very important to get the link to where the certificate is stored correct. I spelled my name wrong and Let’s Encrypt was trying to find a folder called DvidCopley.co.uk. that’s not how I spell David.