I underestimated how much Github Pages does for you.
For the migration, I had to get a lot more comfortable with security groups, ACLs, Docker debugging, nginx directives and asking strangers online for help. The Remark42 (comment engine I added) maintainer was so helpful I become a project sponsor for the first time.
The end result is a much more brittle infrastructure with gaping security holes (please don’t hack my humble, free-tier instance) and no elasticity. I did my best to follow best practices, but I’m not a devops engineer, so there’s plenty to learn. It was a complicated task that consumed a good portion of my free time for the last two week. For most people who simply want to post content on a blog, this is an irrational decision.
It was well worth the time. Visiting my blog now makes me a lot happier even though I’m rendering the exact same thing. I feel a lot more comfortable looking at a nginx.conf file or reading DNS records for a domain. I discovered new concepts to investigate like ephemeral ports.
I had my dosage of networking for the time being. Think I’m going to look into something different next week.