So, the deed is finally done. I've moved finally from the Wordpress.com blog to my own digs. The weird thing is that I've been online for close to a decade and I have never owned a domain, nor been on any actual paid hosting setup of my own, so it is kind of weird that the first step I've taken in that direction is to be on a Virtual Private Server. Following is the stack that is powering this site: Web host: Slicehost (256 MB slice) Web server: Nginx0.6.29 Scripting language: PHP 5.2.5 (FCGI) Database Server: PostgreSQL 8.3 Object cache: Memcached CMS Framework: Drupal 6.2 Email: Google Apps for Domains It has taken me close to a month to get the set up tweaked, tuned and backed up to my liking and from the tests that I've done it should hold up well against reasonable traffic levels. If it were to go any higher than that, I'll slap on another slice to it and push the database on to that. It is a bit of a pain to hold a day job and also administer your own servers, but I love the freedom and flexibility it gives me. First impressions: Slicehost: Absolutely stunning service levels with zero problems. I have never pinged support for anything till date and almost everything is well documented. Can't say enough good things about them. The day they would allow me to save instances to deploy new slices based on them, I would be over the moon about it. Though I'll give you a fair warning, if you are not comfortable with the command line, stay clear of it. Drupal: Nicely built framework with one of the WORST-ever administration UI that mankind has ever come up with. The good is that you'll rarely have to touch even a bit of code for 90% of your requirements, the bad is that the other 10% will get even grown men crying like babies. There are freaky bits like admin screens for particular modules disappearing for no particular reason. Still, for something is available free of cost, it is a solid bit of software. Nginx: I have not had actual traffic hit the server yet, so can't say yet if it is as good as the legend goes.