Hello, Wow, thank you for all responses. I did not expect this many. You guys are really helpful!
I had a feeling my original plan was too complicated. I appreciate that you guys are pointing it out. Honest feedback is good feedback. No need to spare any feelings if I'm doing something wrong. :) I think some people here are wondering what I'm "trying to do" with a blog. Honestly, for now I just want a piece of the web that I own, where I can just post whatever I want. It could just be that I have something I want to share with friends or colleagues, and I can direct them to a URL that points to a web server that belongs to *me*, where I'm in complete control, instead of Facebook or tumblr. I'm not too concerned with attracting an audience or search engine rankings right now---though maybe in the future I will. I think it's wonderful if other people visits my website but it's not why I'm trying to do all of this. So right now I'm considering a cheap VPS hosting service where I run OpenBSD because I really like OpenBSD's founding principles. I'm leaning towards VPS instead of just a webhost because having root access to a machine makes me *feel* like the machine is mine and I can do whatever the heck I want. My hope is that the sysadmin aspect doesn't turn out to be a nightmare. So, given all the feedback I got, I'm gonna adjust my proposed project a bit. It's just gonna be a web server, and a bunch of static content pages. You guys proposed many different solutions for these-- I haven't had the chance yet but I'll need to assess which one I'm going to use. Simplicity and stability (i.e. correct, secure, not buggy) will be my criteria. Instead of a comment section, which seems like a headache, I'll just replace it with an email address so a reader can reach me if he/she really wanted to. Though I'm not sure what's the best way to prevent spam (or other ways in which an email address can be abused)? The best idea I can come up with would be to not publicly show the email address but create a contact form with a capcha. A contact form also has the benefit that all the emails I get have a consistent format. Though I'm not sure if contact forms are really the best idea. (btw, isn't the "built-in" httpd webserver just Apache? Google seems to tell me that they're synonyms) David
