Hello World!

Today, I tried to make a post on this blog but discovered that I wasn’t able to visit the wp-admin page to login. Visiting the page gave me a redirect error.

I discovered that the issue was caused by my reverse proxy setup. Because of the reverse proxy, all traffic to my WordPress backend uses HTTP only. And because WordPress’s admin pages are designed to require HTTPS, it redirects me to use HTTPS, causing the infinite redirect loop.

Anyway, I clearly fixed it if I was able to make a new post.

For future reference, I will include the configuration to wp-config here.

if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO'])){
    $_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'on';
}

Every time my reverse proxy receives a request, it sets the HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO variable to HTTPS to indicate that HTTPS was used. So if this is set, then WordPress will treat the HTTP request as HTTPS, allowing me to access the page.

Anyway here is my updated HomeLab. I recently added a PiHole DNS server and a VaultWarden password manager.

I finally deleted my cloud server that was hosting a website that was used to practice web development. It existed for around 2 years and was a simple Ubuntu server that ran only Apache and had 1GB of RAM. I paid $5.50 monthly.

I kept it online all this time while I attended school. Though it was unnecessary, the website was published, had a domain, and a Let’s Encrypt certificate.

Although I learned most of this in school through my great professor Andrew Smith, the hands-on approach of doing it by myself reinforced my knowledge on how the web worked.

Andrew Smith is also the one who inspired me to undertake this project. His very own portfolio managed to convince me to do the same. You can visit his portfolio here.

I had many doubts and was lost in what I wanted to do in my life. He is one of the only professors that I truly felt inspired by to continue my IT journey to become a system’s administrator. Though obviously I have to get my foot in the door as a help-desk first (no company would trust me to manage their systems yet).

Anyway, why did I decide to delete the Ubuntu server? Well I decided to take the self-hosting route. I wanted to take matters into my own hands and learn the management and administration of servers.

Though there is still lots to learn, the plan is to host different types of services that may prove useful. Possibly a Password Manager and a DNS server is up next, who knows?

If you haven’t figured it out by now, the portfolio and this blog is both self-hosted.