This blog originally started in 2014.
Back then, Ghost was just getting started. It felt fresh, minimal, developer-friendly. I was using version 0.x. To be completely honest, I never upgraded it.
Hosting it on Microsoft Azure felt like the “serious” thing to do. So I did.
In those days, SSL wasn’t mandatory. You could run a perfectly fine blog over plain HTTP and no one would panic. The web felt simpler. Lighter.
Then 2018 happened.
Browsers began marking non-HTTPS sites as “Not Secure.” SSL was no longer optional. It became the baseline.
That’s when reality hit.
The Azure instance I was using didn’t properly support SSL without upgrading tiers. The tier that did support it? Significantly more expensive. Add certificates, maintenance, updates, and suddenly I was paying enterprise-grade cloud pricing… for a personal blog.
A blog.
With like, five readers.
Azure + SSL + Node updates + Ghost migrations + monitoring.
At some point I realized I had built a small DevOps department… for a website where I occasionally write about career growth and wine. Wait, I still haven't written about wine.
Meanwhile, Ghost evolved. The old theme I was using no longer followed modern web standards. It worked — but it looked like it remembered Vine.
The web in 2026 is not the web of 2014.
It’s kind of absurd how expensive and operationally complex it has become to maintain one simple personal site. What used to be “spin up a VM and forget about it” turned into certificate renewals, runtime upgrades, dependency audits, and surprise invoices.
All of that… for one blog.
One. Pinche. Blog.
So I made a decision.
I moved to Ghost’s managed hosting.
No servers to patch. No SSL gymnastics. No Azure pricing puzzles. No fighting outdated templates. Just writing.
Sometimes engineering maturity is knowing when not to over-engineer.
And honestly?
It feels good to just publish again.
Hello, world!