So, let’s talk about the technologies used in this blog, just for reference.
Server
The blog is hosted on a DigitalOcean droplet，$5/month，1GB RAM，25GB SSD. I have only used AWS and Digital Ocean before, and apparently, Digital Ocean is the cheaper one. I’ve once also thought about switching to Linode. At that time, DO only got 512MB RAM, so I often run into situations that my programs get killed due to insufficient memory, which was pretty annoying. But just when I was about to pull the trigger, Digital Ocean decided to increase their RAM, so that’s the end of it.
The droplet is running on Ubuntu 16.04, besides running this blog, I also use it to run various of things, like Shadowsock to get around of the Great Firewall, or a program to download anime while I’m away, which are huge lifesavers.
Software
I’ve chosen the LNMP stack and use WordPress as the platform. I’ve seriously considered static blog platforms like Hexo and Jekyll. But one feature I want is to write in both Chinese and English, which these platforms don’t seem to have a good solution. So WordPress it is.
As for the theme, I simply use the official Twentyfifteen theme, with a few of my own tweaks such as:
- Highlight.js code highlight
- Spoiler paragraph collapse
- Algolia search result page
- Medium-like image zoom
You can check the GitHub Repo for detail.
WordPress Plugin
One of the best thing about the WordPress is its plugins, and here’re the ones I use:
- Akismet Anti-Spam
like the name, you can tell by the number of the comments in this blog, it works well. -
Cloudflare
Allows making changes on Cloudflare directly on the dashboard. -
Insert Headers and Footers
used to add Google Analytics script -
Jetpack by WordPress.com
Although it provides many features, the only thing I’m using it write in Markdown. -
Polylang
Multi-language supports, one of the most important reasons I chose WordPress, the free version of WPML though. -
WP Super Cache
like it said, super cache.
Image Hosting
Image uploading can be one of the worst things about WordPress. I often suffer from it as I have to use it at work, so obviously I’d use an image hosting service for my personal blog. I used to use Flickr, which provides fantastic features, speed and experience. But sadly it’s blocked in by GFW, so I had to find an alternative. So I just chose to use GitHub Pages feature. Simply create a repository and push my images to its gh-pages branch, then they’re available on the project page URL.