I'd like to start by saying I decided to renovate my online presence from the ground up because I was looking for a change, and perhaps flex my proactive muscle.

but the truth is that Drupal 10 has been out for some time now, while Drupal 7 is on its last year — and THAT, my friends, is what started the whole process.

yes, FOMO.

having said that, however, I took the opportunity to make some much needed changes in at least three key aspects:

• design
• hosting
• structure

and as I sit down to tell the tale, I realize it's gonna be a lot to cover in one single post, so I decided to break it down into several bite-sized chapters (hence the "part 1 of many" you see above!)

so gather around the proverbial fire, folks, as I drop *wink wink* a tale of daunting design, heroic hosting, and soul-searching structure¹.

for the time being, here's a before and after. I hear that kind of image is quite popular on the interwebz.

Image

so once I decided to rebuild my website from the ground up, it was time to, well, lay the foundations. and that meant checking my webhost to see how we could make everything work.

up until then, I had been working with HostGator for quite a few years. "how long", I hear you ask? well, I found them by pure chance on the Million Dollar Homepage, back when I could do stuff by pure chance. if you don't know what that page is, chances are you were still too young back then²: it was an amazing/chaotic place for people or companies to buy a pixel for a dollar and draw anything.

Image

anyway, HG was solid, inexpensive, and — for my needs — the perfect fit. over the course of the years, when SSL stopped being a luxury and started being an essential part of any website, they solved my problem without too much hassle.

but times have changed, and sadly they've gotten behind: as I looked for a way to upload my new website, it quickly became clear that I'd need to run some commands remotely — and although the support team tried their best, I was still stuck without essential tools like Composer or Drush, that I can run locally without issues.

upgrading the PHP version was another pain point: simply going from 7.4 to 8.1 was not possible without moving my account to a new server. so I started looking around for options, and the first one that came to mind was Pantheon, with whom I had already worked as part of a recent project.

Pantheon gave me not only the option to run Terminal from the comfort of my own PC, but also Git access, multiple environments, and a plethora of other functionalities. you could think of them as a cheaper alternative to Acquia, but still… they cost a pretty penny.

(that's not to say they should accomodate someone like me, who just wants a nice looking website up and running to attract customers. I totally get their business model, it's my pockets I'm not very happy with.)

so after some searching, I ended up taking some old advice my brain happened to have filed for a rainy day (thanks, brain!) and signed up for Hostinger.

now these guys didn't offer the fancy tooling I got from Pantheon, but they let you run Terminal commands on their space, which is very cool (for me at least). and you can have multiple websites, on the latest PHP.

phew.

that solved a lot of problems at once. so once I signed up for them and started taking their environment for a spin, I was finally able to start thinking about a redesign.

and that's the subject of my next post. stay tuned.

¹ "what kind of structure?", I hear you say, "the technical requirements or the narrative kind?" well, I'm glad you asked. the answer is a resounding "yes".

² ok, ok, it was circa 2005. satisfied? 😅

Originally published at LinkedIn here and here on January 10–11, 2024.