Rich's Tongfamily

Well, I spend about $25 on Cloudways with its WordPress-managed installation and about the same on Digital Ocean with a roll-your-own system. It’s kind of a toss-up which one I like better, here are the conclusions after a month:

1. Cloudways theoretically should be faster, but the lags are long and less responsive than our roll-your-own. Some things are really slow like the search for posts is very slow, taking 30 seconds or more compared with the roll-your-own site.
2. The migration wasn’t trouble-free like I had hoped, they did an amazing job, but the writing of rewriting of the WordPress wp-config.php file wasn’t perfect and I had to deal with technical support to add the WP_ROOT and the errors were baffling
3. The main advantage of course is that they are taking care of the many updates you have to worry about. The original reason I did this was the updates are a pain, but it was nice to learn what Redis is and this is bare metal integration. As an example, I wanted to move to a new opcache, but I had to update my PHP to 8.0
4. Another thing I lost which I haven’t had time to fix is that I’m no longer saving images to both Cloudinary and the local drive.

Net, net for me it’s kind of a toss-up right now. Fixing your site is a pain and the site is small enough, or I could just barbell the thing with an application that does dual posting. Personally here is what I would recommend:

1. Use a fully hosted system like Bluehost that I originally used so you just use it as a platform. PC Magazine recommends the usual suspects like HostGater, Bluehost, DreamHost, and InMotion so I’m going to look at that. I’ve used both Bluehost before it got too slow and InMotion before that so will give those a try. I’ve got lots of sites I can test on richtong.org. One good thing about Bluehost is that it has unlimited storage and monthly transfers, so I might go back to that or give HostGator a try.
2. Use a bare metal system so you can get experience on how this works and know the pain of WordPress administration (which is definitely not going to go away)
3. Do both and find a dual poster, so you have two parallel systems. I think this is what I’m going with so richtong.com and tongfamily.com are just mirrors of each other. Then if I don’t have time to fix the roll-your-own site, I can just revert.

Post to Multiple Sites and Import and Export

Of course, some plug-ins support this which is great, both Multi Post and Post Manager do this (which I couldn’t find), and Broadcast which I’m trying now but doesn’t work it just throws an error. So for now, you can expect richtong.com (Digital Ocean roll your own), tongfamily.com (Cloudways), and soon richtong.org (Bluehost), as well as richtong.net (another one), will be doing this.

Of course, Broadcast crashed so now I’m installing a log reader so I don’t have to ssh in to see what happened. I’m trying WP Activity Log right now but that doesn’t help as it notes the installation but the reason for failure, I need the WP Error Log which does require wp-config.php editing. Unfortunately, this gives me PHP logs but doesn’t tell me what is wrong. And there is another plug in that costs $95 a year and I can’t find it listed anywhere called Single Multisite Cross Posting.

I changed my Google-fu and am trying Sync Posts With Other Site which at least installs. It needs the plugin on both sides, so I’m trying now and it does work, this is nice, it just gives you a list of other sites that you set up and then will post there. It uses the WordPress REST API, so make sure it is not blocked.

Catching up with WordPress Export/Import

If you want to catch up on lots of posts, then the built-in export tool is nice for that. Go to the site where you want to export to Tools > Export > Posts and select the Post Range and you can export what you like into a zip file and then you can choose Download the file. Then you go to the other and choose Tools > Import, install the WordPress Importer and then choose Run Importer. Pretty convenient as it imports everything.

Note that the importer only works on Month boundaries, so you are going to get some duplicated posts, but these are usually detected and the ones that aren’t right you can easily delete. Pretty nice.

Why not to host your own machine: Ubuntu 22.04 upgrade fail, 20.04 package crash

OK, now that we have this running, it is time to pole vault the roll-your-own site to Ubuntu 22.04 and get going:

lsb_release -a
# login with root privileges
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt dist-upgrade
# at this point you are the latest and may need to reboot
# this is the miracle command so no more editing sources.list
sudo do-release-upgrade

When I did all this the upgrade actually worked which is kind of a miracle but when trying to run WordPress, I got the dreaded Error establishing database connection and then went through the usual debugging which is to check that the MySQL database is actually up:

ssh yoursite.com
sudo apt install netstat
netstat -plt

But I got the dreaded Waiting for cache lock: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-front and then when I rebooted, the system hung. Oh no! This is the point where you have to hope you took a snapshot so you can recover the system and fortunately, Digital Ocean does backups automatically for the last month or so recovery looks like this:

1. Go to the Digital Ocean console
2. Power off the droplet
3. Take a backup of the broken system (so if the recover fails you are no worst off
4. Look in the snapshot list and pick the latest one. For me this was July 1 and see if that works. If not keep going backwards.

And I’m back, but I still haven’t solved the problem of moving to PHP 8.0 on Digital Ocean, but that’s sort of the point of this site, it’s all about staying close to the Linux bare metal 🙂

Ubuntu 20.04 188 packages no fully downloaded or installed and initramfs error

And, of course, I’m dealing with another problem which is that my working 20.04 installation has a problem where when I try to do an apt upgrade, it destroys python 3.8 and also crashes the apt-get installer. I tried dpkg configure -a to fix and all kinds of errors, but the suggestion in of all places YouTube seems to work which is to run a apt-get purge listing all the offending packages.

I think this is a side effect of something I did earlier trying to install php8.1, but this purge command is awesome! But I still have one remaining error which is update-initramfs cannot create directory and this. Init RAMFS by the way is a very low level utility that Linux uses to create a RAM disk when it is first booting.

apt auto-remove
apt clean
apt update
apt upgrade
# now try to reinstall initramfs
apt remove initramfs-tools
apt install initramfs-tools

But now I get the error saying that it needs initramfs-core and this won’t install. The clue was in looking at old posts and seeing that there is a required version and it can’t find the version, so you have to specify it and it complains about a held-back version. Turns out this was actually three layers deep and you have to specify version

# this fails with an error that the core needs a version
apt install --reinstall initramfs-tools
# so now specify the crazy version it wants
apt install --reinstall initramfs-tools-core=0.136ubuntu6.7
# this then fails saying it needs lz4
apt install --reinstall initramfs-tools-core=0.136ubuntu6.7 lz4
# this then fails saying it wants to install later version of liblz4 which is the core problem, so specify the origianl
apt install --reinstall lz 4 liblz4-1=1.9.2-2ubuntu0.20.04.1
apt install --reinstall initramfs-tools-core=0.136ubuntu6.7
apt install initramfs-tools

WordPress hosting: Giving inmotion a try

There are a huge number of WordPress hosting sites now. I’ve used BlueHost in the past, but in looking at but looking at sites that I think are pretty good like PC Magazine or Hostadvice and others, but what I need is something reliable and which has enough SSD storage, I’m right now using 75GB because of the various images. I do use Cloudinary, but like to have my own backup because you never now.

1. A2 hosting. Hadn’t heard of it before, and they have four levels of hosting, there is Shared Hosting, WordPress Hosting, VPS Hosting and Dedicated Server. It is hard to tell the difference, but it looks like WordPress Hosting has more memory (4GB, I only have 1GB now) and daily backups but starts at $36 for 250GB NVMe and 4GB Memory. The Shared Startup plan is 100GB of Storage for $13, but the $16 is unlimited SSD storage with 1GB of memory, but the TurboBoost is the one they really want you to have with more tuning and 2GB of memory and they use LiteSpeed instead of Apache at $24/month. NOte that hostadvice rates is 4.7 with user reviews
2. HostGater. I haven’t used these guys, like most of these guys, it is hard to tell what things really cost, but the Hatchling is $10/month, Baby package is $15/month and business is $20/month. The Baby is 20GB of storage and the Business is 50GB, so that kind of knocks them out.
3. BlueHost. This was my last hoster before moving to Digital Ocean. They used CPanel but it was pretty slow. Moving the 1 vCPU was a dream, but it was more expensive. I was paying $10/month for BlueHost and this rose to $25/month with Digital Ocean. The two reasons back in 2020 were that the mail was really slow and spammy, so we moved to Google Workspace (much better!) and the site was slow. But this remains a top choice and looking at their current plans, Basic is $12/month for 10GB, Choice Plus is $22 for 50GB and Pro is $29 for 100GB, so also a little expensive or at least the same as Cloudways with 50GB and Digital Ocean with 75GB
4. DreamHost. This has VPS or Virtual Private Servers which are going to be faster, but their storage is relatively low at with their Shared hosting which says they have SSD storage, but not what the limit is for $8/month and $13/month for unlimited number of sites
5. inmotion hosting. Lots of free themes and looking at their plans, for the Cpanel hosted, they have storage, so this is a good choice, and unlimited bandwidth for $15e. $12/month with 100GB NVMe which is great and the $15 is Unlimited NVMe
6. AccuWeb. Another one that I don’t know, but they have 75GB and 100GB plans for 3 and 4GB RAMS which is pretty good at $15/month and $18 per month
7. WP engine. I’ve actually heard about this one but they have a lot of plans. They say they are #1 in WordPress hosting so good to pay attention to them and they use Atlas which is a rewritten headless version that uses Next and React, something I need to try. Their pricing scheme is more ala cart, but the startup one has one site 10GB of storage, so the main issue is here lack of storage. $20/month gives you 10GB of storage and they charge extra for updates, etc.
8. GoDaddy. I’ve used this before, they really work on the upsell, but the site looks better, but the main issue is lack fo storage. $11/month annually gives you 10GB of NVMe storage

Hostadvice has some other ones I’ve not heard of, it is raining hosters, I’m not sure its a good idea to just but they recommend:

1. Bluehost. Another vote for this one.
2. SiteGround.com. I’ve actually heard of these but they are limited to 40GB SSD
3. Hostinger.com. 100-200GB SSD
4. Inmotion. Another vote for inmotion.
5. Dreamhost. Also a similar vote.
6. HostGater. Another vote
7. Cloudways. Hey I use this one already!
8. GoDaddy. Another similar vote.
9. ScalaHosting. Looking at the pricing, they do have WP Advances wich 100GB fixe NVMe for $20/month
10. Fast Comet and Host Armada are other

So downselecting, it looks like for a low bandwidth site that uses a bunch of storage, here are the choices and I can try them to see performance etc:

1. inmotion hosting. Given they have 100GB for $12 and unlimited SSD for $15 plans. With their current discounts, you get a year for $35 and then you can think about renewal at $12/month which is pretty great.
2. Dreamhost. if I can figure out what SSD storage available means
3. A2 hosting. It has 100GB with their shared plan for $13/month
4. Accuweb. They have 75 and 100GB for $15 and $18
5. ScalaHosting. 100GB for $20/month so at the higher end

For comparison, here is what I’m currently paying:

1. Digital Ocean WordPress Droplet. $28/month with 50GB and 2GB RAM on 1 vCPU
2. Cloudways. $25/month, not sure what the underlying is

So I’m thinking if I can fix Digital Ocean, I keep that (I have a huge upgrade problem now), so I might just keep Cloudways and forget about learning