Every Stack Decays; Plan for It
This post is a postmortem and celebration of my old web server that was ten years old before it needed to be replaced instead of trying to update it. Every stack decays over time. If your thinking web development a stack might be LAMP or MEAN. Stack in this context is the web server operating system itself, the HTTP server and any other software layering that makes running a web server easier. My goal in using WordPress for my blog was to create a platform that would allow me to focus on writing without worrying about technical details. The choice of WordPress seemed like an ideal solution at the time—popular, secure, and easy to use. However, as the years have passed, I’ve come to realize that these abstractions often come with hidden costs. Only my lack of experience at the outset obscured the implicit agreement to update and maintain the software abstractions I chose to use.