Brian Burroughs - Tech Roads

Building a static site with S3, Cloudfront and Jekyll

I experimented with a static site, hosted on AWS S3. After some years, I have decided to preserve the blog basics here in one megapost, and shut down the original "Wordcasa" S3 site.

Wordpress

Migrating from wordpress.com to Ghost

As part of a big cleanup of my web sites, I am moving a wordpress.com site into my default Ghost Docker stack. It's a flying blog, with a few hundred MB of images.

Caddy

Building a Caddy container stack for easy HTTPS with Docker and Ghost

I'm building a Caddy-stack to serve up HTTPS sessions, with a Ghost back end, using Docker containers, orchestrated with Docker Compose. You'll easily be able to replace the Ghost back end with other container-based apps such as Nginx or Wordpress. Updated January 2022.

Dev

Building my app foundation: Ionic + React, Amplify, Appsync, Lambda resolver

In this mega post, I will create an Ionic app that will initiate a query from a mobile front end, issue requests over the internet to an AWS GraphQL API, and via AppSync, invoke a Lambda, to process and return dummy data.

AWS

"Moving" my S3 backup bucket to a new AWS region

I have moved the Techroads server from an AWS US region to an AWS EU region. This server and its chums are backing up to an S3 bucket, which has been left behind in the US.

AWS

What are AWS Amplify and AppSync, and should I use them?

I am old in IT but new in development, and I've been spending time researching what tools and platforms to use for a social-good app I am making. I have some idea now around which Javascript framework to use, and am diving in to deployment, integration, and hosting environments. So

Docker

Get ready for heavy traffic: Adding a Varnish cache to a production Docker stack

All bloggers dream of the day that their site has an article that goes viral, reaching the front page of Reddit, a viral Tweet, or FB share. I've had it happen, and believe me it's an awful, awful feeling when your small VPS crashes, while 30 hits a second bounce off into oblivion.

Docker

Matomo + Apache killed my server. Then Matomo + Nginx killed my server.

When accessing the Matomo console, the VPS memory usage spikes, and kills the server. I suspect Apache is the memory hog.

Docker

Scheduling a Docker Compose image auto-update in linux

My objective is to have a small script run daily which pulls any new Docker image versions and runs a docker-compose update, capturing the output to a log. The environment is Ubuntu 18.04.

Wordpress

Reducing memory use on my MariaDB/Mysql Wordpress docker stack

I found that after migrating in from a locally installed Wordpress duo on a 2GB VPS, my new instance started crashing once a day, due to running out of memory.

Docker

Docker logging to the local OS that works, with compose and rsyslog

My objective is to get logging output from my container applications consolidated under /var/log, with logfile names matching their origin container. Logfile cohabitation will allow me to incorporate them in the housekeeping rotation ritual of the rest of my system,

Wordpress

This time it's Multisite - Migrating locally installed Wordpress to a Traefik Dockerised stack

I still have a locally installed Wordpress Multisite instance on my old server, and I will need to migrate it to a docker stack too, before I can decommission.

Wordpress

Migrating a Wordpress local install to a Traefik Dockerised stack

I have two legacy Wordpress sites on a VPS with 2GB memory. I'd like to move them to an upgraded Ubuntu keeping Nginx, and at the same time - Dockerise!

Wordpress

Building a twin Wordpress stack with Traefik, Nginx and Docker

I am going to build a dual Wordpress stack with Traefik, Nginx, PHP-fpm, and MariaDB in Docker, using Docker-compose. I plan to eventually migrate into this from an older server I have with locally installed Wordpress.

Docker

A move to truly private web analytics - self hosting Matomo with Docker, Traefik and MariaDB

Moving away from Google Analytics has been on my to-do list for quite a long time. As we all know, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. In the case of GA it's worse, everyone that visits your web site becomes the product as well, whether they like it or not.

Docker

Building a self-hosted Commento system for embedding comments with Docker and Traefik

As part of my mission to build a lean and fast blog with privacy features, I have settled on Commento for my embedded comment system, and need to get it installed and embedded in this blog.

Ghost

Filling up a 1GB server with a stack of Ghost blogs

I have a kind of rudimentary "Ghost multisite" in the form of a Docker stack, so just how many Ghost blogs can I stuff into a single 1GB virtual server?

Getting Started

Comparing blog comment systems with privacy features

I am looking for an embedded comment system heavy on privacy features, light and fast, that I can self host in Docker. Time to get installing!

AWS

Scheduling an AWS CLI backup to S3 in Linux

I'll cover creation of the S3 bucket, configuration of the AWS IAM security, installation of the AWS CLI, some key commands, and creating a cron job to automate it.

Linux

Create a custom Linux log file with rotation

Rather than drop my custom logs into the vast cesspool that is syslog, I'd like to create a custom log file and automate the rotation, for a AWS CLI function I am running from cron.

Docker

Building Ghost in a docker container with Ubuntu, Traefik, and SQLite

My early experiments with installing Ghost presented a curio: it's so light, how do I install without eating a whole VPS server. Or even make use of this one server for more than one Ghost blog, effectively a Ghost multisite.

Ghost

Crunching images to get blog pages loading faster for free

This is a short post to look at the general load profile of a Ghost page, and to crunch some images to see the performance effect.

Gimp

Making basic icons in Gimp for a new Ghost blog.. or any blog

I walk through the process of using Gimp to make an icon and a logo, to bring a bit of favicon and banner bling to my new Ghost blog.

Getting Started

Tech Roads Site Launch

Why not roll up a blog on a light framework like Ghost, to start dumping some of my tech adventures and insights for the benefit of the greater blogiverse?