Blog. Such an ugly-sounding word, and one that I still am reluctant to use even now. Yet here we are.

After setting up all the support functionality on this VPS, the inevitable question that arises is OK now what? For me that meant generating some content for the site. After all this is my Phase Door and it’s time to begin engaging with it.

Almost immediately upon turning on Apache, the access logs showed frequent GET attempts for various WordPress php URIs. None of which existed of course because of my reluctance to start blogging. So when I had finished up with Postfix and Dovecot, I hesitated in executing the WordPress install.

Did I really need or want to be spending time managing content and styles? I had set it up before in 2020 and remembered feeling like eh, this is just ok. The stylization was simple enough to get started but soon distracted me. How can I tinker with the CSS that won’t break the template? Is this the layout I want? Do I have the latest security patches to avoid SQL injection?

The point of the matter is that I wasn’t spending time writing. The access logs reminded me I didn’t want to make that mistake again. No, I needed to peruse other publishing solutions. Something simple, something without a database to maintain — maybe something written in Perl.

Enter Plerd with its easy, predictable, and austere content publishing, behooving me to get on with it.

So this is my first gratitude post. It seems a useful tag to populate on this site, and I will try to keep up the mindful habit of expressing gratitude and turning posts into posterity.