The FreeBSD Diary

Welcome to the newly redesigned FreeBSD Diary[1]. The changes you see before you are courtesy of Bean (thanks). The content remains the same: the largest collection of practical FreeBSD examples available anywhere. Within the recent face lift, you'll find a few new significant changes:

• New colocated server
• Newsfeeds from other sites
• List of sample files
• Server status
• Article by article comments
• Donating to the FreeBSD Diary

Please click on the links above for more information, or just scroll down.

[1] - In case of any problems, you can access the old website at http://old.freebsddiary.org/ and the new website at http://new.freebsddiary.org/. This should cater for any unforseen problems and allow the DNS changes to catch up.

Shortly accepting a new job and then moving to Ottawa, I met up with Jake Burkholder <jake@FreeBSD.org> who mentioned that he had a dual pentium box which was missing some parts. So I bought a 40GB Fujitsu 40Gb 5400 RPM UDMA 100 IDE drive for CAD$139. This forms the storage for the box. I also bought an Enermax PSU, which I'm very happy with. Then I installed FreeBSD 4.3 on it, Apache, mySQL, and about 55 other packages.

The box has actually been installed at the colocation center for about a month. But I've only been able to get things ready over this past weekend. The few people who have been to the site have reported it's quite snappy. Let's hope it remains so.

The Diary has long supplied its own newsfeed. Now, courtesy of a script from Jim Mock, the Diary now shows you the news feeds from other sites.

Jim kindly gave me the script used on his FreeBSD'zine site. This script makes use of RSSLite by Scott Thomason.

There has always been a samples directory. But you've never been able to see what's in there. In the past, all you've been able to see are references to the /samples/ directory from various articles. That was a limitation of being on a shared server (before today, the Diary was just one of hundreds of other websites on a box somewhere in Chicago). But I have complete control (and unfortunately, responsibility) over this box. Therefore, I was able to allow directory listings as and where I needed to. I'd like to thank Mayo for writing up the AddDescriptions you see in that directory. Much appreciated.

I'm most excited, and probably relieved, that the Diary now has article by article feedback. Look at the top left of the page, just under the date, and you'll find links to read and writing the comments. If you have something you'd like to share with the other readers, now you can. Your comments will be available for everyone else. Similarly, if you find a mistake, please feel free to correct me in the comments.

I'm quite sure that every article has been enabled. If you find one which doesn't allow feedback, just let me know. Probably via the phorum.

Someone mentioned to me that I should use PayPal and Amazon to allow people to donate to The FreeBSD Diary. This could be used to offset the increased costs associated with the colocation service. When I initially investigated the option, I found I was shut out because I didn't have a US-based checking account. After consulting the fine folks on the freebsd-chat mailing list, I was able to find a bank willing to allow me to open an account with them. Actually, they were highly recommended. Armed with my check book in hand (actually, I don't have my check book yet), I opened my PayPal and Amazon accounts.

The colocation box is going to cost me approximately US$100 more than the previous website cost. I hope I can make up the shortfall with increased ads. My preference is for the site to become totally user funded. The annual costs are approximately US$330 per year (or a $5 donation from about 81 people; no, my math is right; Amazon takes 15% plus $0.15 per transaction; PayPal is much cheaper). If people donate enough to cover annual costs, I'll remove the ads from the site. Any surplus will be used for equipment and other website related costs.

I'd like to thank all the people who have offered to host my website for free. My primary requirement is that the colocation box be in Ottawa. That's where I live. I want the box close to me for practical reasons. Yes, it would be cheaper to host the box in California for free. But it's just not practical. Thank you.

Note: The Diary won't be the only website on this box. I plan to move FreshPorts here as soon as possible. Eventually, I'll also move my other website heres as well. The Diary takes up the bulk of the cost as it uses about 5GB a month. And FreshPorts does about 2GB a month. All the other websites combined are less than FreshPorts.