Cryptosmith

I have finally merged my WordPress blog site and my old Cryptosmith content under a single Cryptosmith URL. I also installed SSL: it seemed appropriate for a security related site.

There is a link at the top right column of each page that goes to the ‘old’ web site home page. All the previous contents reside there, at least for now.

The whole process was complicated by several factors, all related to GoDaddy, my current ISP.

GoDaddy host accounts always have domain names associated with them. The name itself doesn’t have to be registered through GoDaddy, but the host account MUST have its own, unique domain name. The good news is that you can host several separate sites under “deluxe” host account. However, there are limits to what you can do with such a ‘sub host’. GoDaddy also provides you with a bucketful of free services if you host domains with them, including free “basic” host accounts.

• A few months ago I tried to issue an SSL certificate for cryptosmith.com as a sub-account of my deluxe host account. This did not work. GoDaddy can only apply SSL certificates to the “main” domain for a hosting account
• Yesterday, I created a separate hosting account with one of my extra domain names. I decided I would get the new account working under the other domain name, then I would assign it the cryptosmith.com domain name, and then buy it an SSL certificate.
• Once I finished creating that hosting account, I realized that a free GoDaddy hosting account might get me the same results with no monthly fee. So instead of moving cryptosmith.com to this paid account, I decided I’d put it on its own, free hosting account.
• For practice, I created a free web site with the domain cryptosmith.org. I put up the latest and greatest site contents: the latest WordPress sources combined with the content from my old, hand-build HTML site. I updated WordPress so that it would work with the new URL. I rearranged my other URLs to point to the new location.
• Then I went looking for a way to change the domain name to cryptosmith.com. It turns out you can’t reassign the domain name belonging to one of GoDaddy’s free web sites. So I’d have to create a cryptosmith.com site from scratch.
• Before I could create a cryptosmith.com site, I had to unhook the domain name from its current use. This essentially took my site off-line until the new site came up.
• I started to create the free hosting site. I attached the name cryptosmith.com to it. Then I got to the “Attach SSL Certificate” step and found the options blanked out – GoDaddy won’t attach an SSL certificate to a free hosting account. Ugh.
• So I went back to the extra, paid-for hosting account, updated the contents to match what I thought was the current version of my web site, and changed the name to cryptosmith.com.
• I visited www.cryptosmith.com. I got a “Parked free by GoDaddy.com!” web page. Not what I wanted. The host renaming instructions said this could take “two to twenty four hours” but that both the old and new name should work almost immediately. I wondered if I’d broken something by trying to attach cryptosmith.com to so many different things in the past few hours. It seemed equally likely that GoDaddy’s internal mechanisms just needed some time to correctly sort things out. So my wife and I went to the Y to exercise.
• Upon return from the Y, I could finally reach my new, renamed, and presumably upgraded, Cryptosmith site. I typed in the URL and was greeted by my customized WordPress layout. But when I signed in as admin, I was greeted by the warning that I needed to upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1. I had upgraded a month ago. I had also tried to download two add-ons. Neither appeared.
• After reloading the site a couple of times with no apparent effect, I looked at my FTP configuration and realized I was updating the wrong site. Not surprising, since I’d been pushing roughly the same content to three or four different web sites over the past 24 hours.
• I fixed the FTP configuration. Still no change. Even worse, I couldn’t get the WordPress upgrade script to execute without crashing. But it was dinner time, so we left it as is. I began to suspect that there was an inconsistency in the mapping of HTTP and FTP references to cryptosmith.com. Again, I could only hope that the differences would sort themselves out in a few hours.
• I re-pushed the entire site this morning. Finally (!) the upgrade script ran in a sane manner. The new add-ins were working and the site has been SSL secured.

So this process has been a lot more annoying than I expected. The #1 complicating factor was my attempt to go cheap by doing as much as possible through a single “deluxe” host plan instead of having separate hosts for separate domains. Aside from the Cryptosmith site, it’s not clear that I need anything more than free hosting.

The nice thing about the deluxe plan, though, is that it makes it really easy to experiment with content management systems and other Web based applications. I just create a subdirectory/subdomain, install the package, and try it out. So far the experience has made me skeptical of just about everything except WordPress. Joomla and Drupal are interesting in their own ways, but seem much harder to customize. Simple Machines Forum looks promising for building a group web site (like a scout troop or other community organization) but it looks too much like a discussion forum (which it is) as opposed to a login-protected data repository and events calendar application (which is what organizations really need).

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