Hello world! (Reprisal)

I recently rebuilt this website because the version of PHP on my host was old, unsupported, and limited my ability to upgrade the version of WordPress.

There is a technique for using an Apache directive in your shell (Linux only, obviously) and telling the system which version of PHP to use. I did that, but it wasn’t working. I tracked down all the advice on the forums, reached out to support, but didn’t hear back (just the standard spiel I was already doing.)

I decided to launch a new website, import all the content, and be done with it. I took a couple of hours to install all the plugins and reconfigure the various integrations, but it was a great reminder of many things WordPress, Apache, and hosting.

There are tools that can backup your entire site and allow you to rehost it elsewhere. Maybe I should have just done that, but I felt like building it new from scratch. Besides, I was going to export my content from the old site and import it into the new site.

The coolest thing was remembering how the Linux command, wget, can be used to mirror an entire website. The challenge is that, at some point, you shut down your old website and can’t remember some obscure menu, page, or something you built but haven’t used in a while.

The command “wget -m <<wesite name here>>” copies everything to the local directory, and updates the folders and URLs so it can be viewed by the browser directly from your hard drive. No webserver needed.

In the process of creating the new website, WordPress publishes a single post called, “Hello World!” This is that post.