For some time now, I have wanted to get started with a cloud-based server. However, the process seemed overwhelming and somewhat intimidating. I had worked through some tutorials in both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, but these were just “toy” projects. I always came away feeling that there must be more that would need to be done in order to build something real. In reality, I think that I was afraid of what I might not know and that I would end up making a mess. Recently, I began experimenting by installing WordPress in a virtual machine running Ubuntu, and today I decided to take the plunge and do that same thing in Azure. In one afternoon, I created the virtual machine, created a database server, installed the web server, then installed and configured WordPress. I even configured one of my DNS aliases to point to the new server. I still have some work to do — I want to configure the multisite feature in WordPress, I need to add links to social media outlets, and eventually I want all of the DNS entries to point to the same place. I am pleased, though, with my efforts. I pushed myself to venture outside my comfort zone, and I recreated my existing website on the new server in far less time than I thought it would take. I think there’s a lesson here. Fear of the unknown can be a powerful adversary that prevents us from learning and growing and sometimes from doing. Often, the toughest part of a project or task is starting it. As the Chinese proverb says. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
