As I upgraded, I decided to change my theme. I quite like the new theme, it makes a change to have a bit of colour on my blog, which I quite like, though I do still have the old theme kicking around on the server, should I decide to change my mind. Another change, is the VPS on which this blog is hosted, which is now hosted by Fivebean. So far, no real issues, the minor issue I initially had was dealt with promptly and explained thoroughly, I'd definitely recommend giving Fivebean a look if you're in the market for a VPS

I do have one small issue currently, which I'm not sure whether it is being caused by WordPress, PHP, Apache, or the VPS setup on Fivebean's part, whereby directly after a reboot the RAM usage sits at around 300MB, and refreshing the WP dashboard causes usage to jump upwards by around 200MB. Now I know WordPress likes its RAM, but not that much, it certainly wasn't an issue on the old VPS. Anyway - more news on that as it comes.

I did have possibly the most unusual method of moving my blog over - in that I zipped up the directory, moved it over to the new VPS, and imported the database, same for the apache2 settings. Luckily, 98% of it went without a hitch! A few issues with virtual hosts and mod_rewrite, but that's all.

I now have a constant IRC presence, because I'm no longer limited by the VPS provider on what I can and can't use (gotta love having a friend with a server!). And yes - it's running Ubuntu 8.04 Server

I changed my mind and did it about an hour after posting that last post. Hopefully I remembered to use the correct feed type for WordPress, else I'll have to edit it again!

From what I've seen though, the site seems to be holding up pretty well, It's not using gross amounts of RAM just yet, but I'll be keeping an eye on it The only real issue I've run into is that it doesn't seem to want to email me when a comment is held for moderation, or when a comment is left at all.

I'm not sure why it doesn't, because it sends out emails for registration.  I'll have to wait and see how that one goes

As some of you know, I recently bought a MacBook, and I realised I didn't have a page up on my .com domain, so I decided to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, and had a play with iWeb '09. The end result isn't bad, and moving the blog over to my VPS provider would mean 2 things:

1) I'd actually be using my VPS for something
2) I'd have a more fine grained control over my blog, because I would be hosting it myself. Currently this blog is hosted by wordpress.com

It could mean I'd need to upgrade my VPS package, because currently I only have 384 MB RAM on there. I guess it all depends on how much MySQL decides that it wants to take, though before upgrading I'd look into tweaking some MySQL settings to see if I can reduce the amount it needs.

Ultimately I'd like to do this just because of number 1 above. But also it would teach me some more about Apache, MySQL, possibly PHP. I may also look into changing the site at some point, possibly to a Drupal installation, but we'll have to wait and see

Any thought's on whether you think this would be a worthwhile move, or any recommendations you have on tweaking various settings on the server (it runs Ubuntu 8.04) would be fantastic!

For example 2.5 years ago, my family bought a PC that had 256Mb of RAM, which we upgraded to 512Mb, and that was quite a lot back then, but a year later, most PC's were coming with a minimum of 512Mb, the majority with 1Gb.

So I think in 5 years time, we'll easily be looking at what we consider stupid amounts of RAM, though most likely for servers, not desktop machines. In fact I was just reading an article on Slashdot about "How To Use a Terabyte of RAM", it was more specifically for the Linux Kernel, however it provokes some interesting thoughts on what could possibly be done with that much RAM.