Hosting on James Montgomery

Introducing Station Finder

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

After migrating my blog to Cloudflare Pages, I wanted to run an application exclusively using Cloudflare products. Inspiration struck on a journey where I was low on fuel in the car.

Introducing Station Finder

Station Finder is a single-page application. The goal was to provide a means to locate a fuel station.

Initially, you select a postcode and choose from a dynamically populated list of station results.

A station selection updates the objects on the page to reflect the station choice.

Migrating to Cloudflare Pages

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

TL; DR

I recently decided to evaluate Cloudflare as a static site hosting provider. This post covers my findings and migration from AWS Amplify.

Amplify Overview

The Amplify configuration is unchanged from the previous migration post. The website is statically generated content built with Hugo (noted as Hugo assets in the diagram). Cloudflare provides a proxy to save on bandwidth and provide a CDN function.

Besides providing hosting for ja.mesmontgomery.co.uk, Amplify provides several redirects.

Migrating site to AWS

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

TL; DR

Some time ago, I decided to multi-cloud my site. I’ve recently decided to revert to a single cloud hosting provider. I’m taking the opportunity to experience Amplify static hosting for this site.

Challenges with the previous configuration

Multiple hosting locations meant multiple build processes.

In effect, the site was built, deployed (to Firebase) then rebuilt and redeployed (to AWS). Admittedly, the latter was rarely an overhead as the AWS Amplify CI/CD workflow was triggered upon commit to the master branch on CodeCommit.

Domain migration and enabling DNSSEC

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

TL; DR

The renewal date on my .co.uk domain was nearing. I decided to make a change from 123-reg to iwantmyname. After migration, I captured the process to enable DNSSEC when using Cloudflare for DNS. For those thinking of a similar migration, I have also documented my experience of moving to iwantmyname.

.co.uk domain registrar migration to iwantmyname

I had used iwantmyname previously and so benefitted from having an account already. After sign-in/signup the overview page has a link to allow a domain transfer to start:

Updating site privacy settings

Tue, 10 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

TL; DR

I’ve been reviewing the available Hugo privacy settings.

You can review the latest configuration on my site project page. Below I discuss the purpose of the changes.

Do not track

I’ve updated my Hugo site configuration to respect “do not track” (DNT) browser settings in Google Analytics. The effect is similar to browsing a site in private or incognito mode, which if you used previously blocked Google Analytics.

If you have DNT enabled as part of your usual browser configuration, Google Analytics on this site will not run when you visit.

Duel stack life - exchanging momentum for speed

Fri, 22 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

TL; DR

I knew duel stacking this site would introduce some challenges. In this case, I found myself chasing speed demons at the expense of a focus on other project time. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it - however, there’s a lesson in there.

Multi-cloud thoughts

This site is a project which began on the one hand as a reason to explore the GCP Firebase hosting product. Extending it to AWS has added a dimension to it whilst still being relevant to the project itself.