You never forget your first web server
»From the business, college, and web/tech part of the brain.
Jeremy’s entry about his first web server brought back fond memories of my own web server that I ran during my college years just over 5 (golly) years ago.
It was a Pentium 3, 256MB, 20GB running FreeBSD 4.x off a Qwest 256Kb/s downstream connection. In a time before blogs, Gandalf.MarcChung.com was a convenient way for my friends to run their personal websites and for myself to learn UNIX. I was webmaster, sysadmin, and customer support rep all rolled into one. One day I’d be fixing a friend’s HTML, and the next I was using setting up Apache+SSL, MySQL, and PHP using the usr/ports system.
Some websites I ran (that are still up today) are Cork, AwareLabs, Artique.ro, Vivin.net, and my personal website. My college roommate (chapter president of the ASU BMES club) also ran his club’s website on Gandalf. Later, as chapter president (but of the ACM), I also ran the ASU ACM website. It was eventually moved over to ASU’s campus and eventually lost in the great sea of red tape.
For “fun”, I wrote a personal information manager in PHP that kept track of my daily To-Do items, managed my online writings/rants/diary, and even let me upload and download files between school and home.
Like Jeremy, this experience also led to my first “web programming” job at a Startup 1.0 during my time at ASU.
I maintained Gandalf, until the terrible hard disk crash of 2003, just after graduation, and fortunately just after I setup my last “client” with a Real Webhosting Company (TM). These days, Gandalf sits quietly in my storage closet slowly gathering dust and dreaming of a day where it will one day run another startup. Or at least prototype one.