The Migration
So, I spent the waking hours of last evening prepping the new server and moving my files from the old hosting provider to the new one. All told, I must’ve moved something like 150-200MB of compressed data. Some of it is quite dated, the cruft of obsolete code methodologies and projects. Now that I’m moving, I should discard some of that old stuff.
One possibly minor wrinkle involves how the new provider handles subdomains. The old provider allowed the user (me) to specify which directory would serve as root of the subdomain. So, for whatever reason, I had put all the roots of all the *.kenware.com subdomains under the kenware.com root. Therefore, I could access the subdomain via kenware.com/subdomain_root or subdomain.kenware.com. “_root” was optional.
The new provider forces me to put the subdomains at an equal level with the kenware.com domain root. If kenware.com files are at ~/kenware.com, then the images subdomain would be at ~/images.kenware.com instead of ~/kenware.com/images.
In hindsight, I’m not sure that all of those subdomains are necessary. I put images at images.kenware.com, CSS files at css.kenware.com, CGI scripts at cgi.kenware.com, etc. Granted, in some cases I did use subdomains as a proper functionality separator, like wgc.kenware.com for WarGame Central stuff, and lyrics.kenware.com for my song lyrics database and diplomacy.kenware.com for my Diplomacy game engine, but I’m not sure if I should maintain those. I may put the WarGame Central stuff in its own top-level domain. Maybe. Thing is, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with kenware.com. It has served me well, but it’s also served as a catch-all of sorts. I already know that some corporate firewalls block the site as being gaming related, which it is and isn’t, sort of.
Originally, KenWare was going to be my Holy Grail, a small software company run by me and a few friends. That dream fell by the wayside, which was a blessing in disguise. It would have failed. Since that time, as my sole domain until I acquired barscape.net, it was a vehicle for various webby software projects. Now, it needs to become something else, something firmer.
WarGame Central was an idea cooked up on a sleepless night a few years ago. It was going to be a place that allowed wargamers to play each other via the Internet. Yes, there are tools available out there, but each is flawed in some way. They are better than nothing, which is what most of the users say about them. Perhaps it’s time that kenware.com focused on the WarGame Central concept. Who knows?