blip zip blog

What's the point in running a homelab and all the associated VPNs to get traffic off/onto the internet unless you actually use them?!

To that end, GitHub pages and Jekyll is out, and some simple microblog is in.

I've done some reading around, and writefreely looks like a solid bet. Authn is basic in the OOTB config, but it does support OAuth so I can use that if needs be. In the mean time, a really long password should do.

Plan is to get a cheap new VPS, and use that for various different blip.zip subdomains (initially just blog and blog-test). It'll act as the gateway for inbound traffic. nginx will be a reverse proxy to point each subdomain to a distinct service. It's public-facing, so certbot can take care of the TLS cert configuration.

Two WireGuard tunnels will take traffic from the VPS gateway into the homelab; one for lab machine, and another for prod.

Ionos looks remarkably cheap, and given that I need the bare minimum bandwidth, it's probably the best bet.

TODO list for tomorrow: – Order the VPS – Setup DNS (A record for blip.zip, then aliases for blog and blog-test) – Customise existing VPS setup scripts for this gateway: – install nginx and certbot – configure nginx to proxy blog and blog-test into nuc2 (lab) and nuc3 (prod) – Customise existing nuc scripts for these machines: – download, add, setup writefreely – use iptables