An Obligatory Hello, World!

After hours of research and tinkering, welcome to the primeval incarnation of this site! After some initial trial and error to get the Cloudflare DNS records setup correctly, a Digital Ocean VPS instance connected to the domain name, and Ghost setup correctly to serve the site's content, we are here together.
I'm using Cloudflare as my registrar partly because I appreciate what they have done for the InfoSec space over the years and partly due to the excellent DNS features provided out of the box. I'm using a virtual private server to host the site site. Despite requiring more work from me, I feel I'll get the most control over what I do with the site and learn so much along the way. Initially I considered using Linode for VPS hosting after hearing great things about them on The Changelog podcast. They offer an enticing low-cost option to get started but after further research I had concerns about overall uptime. Digital Ocean appears on numerous "Best VPS Providers" lists I've skimmed through, whereas Linode does not. Digital Ocean also offers low-cost options similar to Linode. So we are running on a Digital Ocean VPS for now.

Given that the main intention for this site is to share information, ideas, and experiences, I'm giving Ghost a trial run. Their marketing towards content creators caught my attention and the built-in themes seem slick; flashy UI features included out of the box that would probably take me tens of hours to replicate on my own are hard to argue against when trying to quickly get a site off the ground. I will say that at a cursory glance, Ghost seems to put you into a bit of a sandbox. My initial assessment may mostly be a product of not yet having the time to dive into customization options. I know that Ghost uses a unique UI framework they call Handlebars that I will need to dig into. See, a new learning experience already! We will see how it pans out. I lead an already busy life so leaning on technologies that reduce friction may ultimately outweigh the novelty of learning something new and shiney.

At this stage I'm just extremely pleased that these words can be presented to whoever might stumble upon them in something resembling a clean layout. I look forward to molding this site into a digital manifestation of Me.