Migrated to DigitalOcean!

After some prodding from my co-workers, and constant harassment about my site’s “security”, I decided to move to the DigitalOcean cloud.

This will not only save me a few dollars a month (currently using the $10/month droplet, but may downsize), but will also give me full control over the hosting of my site.

Additionally, I will be able to secure my site as I see fit, instead of getting a monthly e-mail that my setuid.c file is malicious.

So far, DigitalOcean is a pretty simple and intuitive cloud provider, with some fun graphs to boot.

It was fairly simple to move my WordPress site over, and it only took a few steps:

1. Setup my DigitalOcean one-click WordPress deploy (may migrate to a manual $5/mo install, but this was easier for now0
2. Backup my wp-content and other important files from my original host
3. Backup my wordpress DB
4. Go through the WordPress “install” on the new site
5. Overwrite the existing wp-content folder with my backup
6. Wipe the wordpress database and restore my backup
7. Replace any other important files (favicon, webmaster tools, etc.)
8. Fix file ownership and permissions
9. Update DNS information

I think that I migrated everything just fine, but please let me know if you see any weird hiccups or quirks.

Also, if anyone else is thinking about signing up for DigitalOcean as a cheaper cloud provider, then please use my referral link (www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=6b57e3536b1e). This will give you $10 in credit just for signing up (already 1-2 months of hosting), and give me $25 in credit as well!

I will be sure to update if I do anything interesting or fun now that I’m hosting everything myself, but I’m definitely looking forward to using DigitalOcean.

Ray Doyle

Ray Doyle is an avid pentester/security enthusiast/beer connoisseur who has worked in IT for almost 16 years now. From building machines and the software on them, to breaking into them and tearing it all down; he’s done it all. To show for it, he has obtained an OSCE, OSCP, eCPPT, GXPN, eWPT, eWPTX, SLAE, eMAPT, Security+, ICAgile CP, ITIL v3 Foundation, and even a sabermetrics certification!

He currently serves as a Senior Staff Adversarial Engineer for Avalara, and his previous position was a Principal Penetration Testing Consultant for Secureworks.

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