Blog

HTTPS
In case you haven’t notice, lesterchan.net is now on HTTPS.

Back in August 2014, Google announced that they will use HTTPS as a ranking signal for searches:

For these reasons, over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We’ve seen positive results, so we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. For now it’s only a very lightweight signal – affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content – while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS. But over time, we may decide to strengthen it, because we’d like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.

I am using the recommended SSL config generated from Mozilla’s SSL Config Generator which gives me a A+ grade for my SSL Test from Qualys SSL Labs.

Though SSL certificates are getting cheaper, they are not free. I hope with the upcoming Let’s Encrypt initiative in middle 2015, more and more sites will move towards HTTPS.

Ubuntu VMs
I also took the plunge and move the site out of my VPS which is on CPanel to two Ubuntu Virtual machines (VM). One VM for web and the other for database. Both VMs and my VPS are hosted by the wonderful guys at Vodien. So do check them out if you require a hosting service in Singapore.

Vodien hosts a lot of popular bloggers’ websites in Singapore such as: Xiaxue, ladyironchef, SUPERADRIANME and TechieLobang.

Loggly
With my two new VMs, I needed an easy and centralized way to store, access and search through my logs. logstash came to my mind, but I am too lazy to set it up.

I chanced upon Loggly which is a very popular cloud log management service. I am on their free plan which is the “Lite – Free Forever Plan”. The free plan allows you to send up to 200MB of logs daily to them and the data retention is 7 days. That is good enough for a small site like mine.