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driftar's Blog - My journey to Shifter

driftar's Blog - My journey to Shifter

Description of the journey of my website. From a digital nomad.

Karl Widmer

May 20, 2020
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  1. driftar’s Blog
    My journey to Shifter
    Karl Widmer
    @widmerkarl
    www.driftar.ch

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  2. Agenda
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch
    • Who am I…
    • Why WordPress?
    • My website’s journey until today
    • Why Shifter?

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  3. Agenda
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch
    • Who am I…
    • Why WordPress?
    • My website’s journey until today
    • Why Shifter?

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  4. Agenda
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch
    • Who am I…
    • Why WordPress?
    • My website’s journey until today
    • Why Shifter?

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  5. Agenda
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch
    • Who am I…
    • Why WordPress?
    • My website’s journey until today
    • Why Shifter?

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  6. Who am I…
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  7. Who am I… Tl;dr - Job
    • Working in IT
    • Specialized in virtualization
    • Broad general IT knowledge
    • Working for a company…
    • …specialized in surface technologies
    • 15’000+ employees world wide
    • Responsible for data center &
    cloud
    Tl; dr – Hobbies
    • Firefighter
    • Voluntary service in my home town
    • Reading
    • Science fiction, war stories
    • Books about technology
    • Blogging
    • Primarily about technology / IT
    • Coffee lover!
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  8. Why WordPress?
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  9. Why WordPress?
    To be honest, I just wanted to start with a website somehow.
    I’m not a programmer, nor did I understand much about
    content management systems and all that stuff.
    I stumbled across WordPress and tried it. Easy as that.
    WordPress…
    • …is easy to set up
    • …is easy to configure
    • …is easy to use
    • ..is flexible
    • …is extensible
    • …doesn’t need much (of everything)
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  10. My website’s journey until today
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  11. A digital nomad…
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  12. First steps on AWS
    • Found documents back from 2011…
    • Built a small environment on AWS EMEA
    • First steps with Bitnami
    • Easy to deploy 1-2-3 WordPress
    • All self-managed
    • EC2 / S3 / CloudFront / Route53
    • First experience with WordPress
    • Website not «in production», only for fun and
    playing with technology
    • Somewhen I moved away from AWS…
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  13. …and moved to Vexxhost
    • Migrated to Vexxhost, Canada
    • Searching for a hoster specialized in
    WordPress hosting
    • Searching for more speed
    • My website was now «in production»
    • New experience, some managed services
    • But still all under my own control
    • Not very happy with the speed at the end
    • Somewhen I moved away from Vexxhost…
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  14. …and moved again, to
    SiteGround
    • Hosting company based in UK
    • Closer to my location
    • Still searching for more performance
    • Searching for specialized WordPress
    hosting
    • My website is still «in production»
    • Some managed services, but huge level of
    self-management
    • First experience with Cloudflare
    • DNS
    • CDN
    • Protection
    • I moved away from here as well…
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  15. …and landed at Shifter!
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  16. Why Shifter?
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  17. Why Shifter?
    It all started on Twitter…
    • People talking about their blogs
    • Is it better to have dynamic or static content?
    • Talking about performance of each kind of content
    That made me think about having a static WordPress site
    and searched for hosting companies.
    But is that even possible with PHP and MySQL?
    It is!
    Finally, with Shifter, I’ve found a company that was
    capable of having a static WordPress site!
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  18. Why Shifter?
    • Quick and easy onboarding
    • Nice people working there!
    • They helped me a lot during migration and
    normal operations as well
    • Fairly priced
    • Great out-of-the-box features
    • Integrated CDN
    • Secure by design
    • Automated core updates
    • Automatic scaling, no servers needed
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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  19. Why Shifter?
    • Speed!
    • Static content loads faster than dynamic content
    • WordPress
    • My favorite CMS
    • Easy handling
    • Start and stop WordPress at any time
    • Use it as you would use it everywhere
    • But there are «but’s»
    • Forms and comment function with external services
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch
    Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear

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  20. Thank you.
    Feel free to reach out to me by mail or Twitter.
    @widmerkarl
    [email protected]
    20.05.2020 driftar's Blog - www.driftar.ch

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