WordPress: From the Cloud to Raspberry Pi

Posted on December 17, 2024 by [email protected]

I didn’t call it a blog, but I started my first Web site on a NeXT Cube on Thanksgiving Day, 1995. The computer was on loan from the US Air Force Academy, and when a new BYU colleague told me about this important development underway called the World Wide Web (Many thanks, Jesse!), I decided I needed to get involved.

First Web Server

It turned out that the particular computer I happened to have available was the same type of unit used to invent the World Wide Web.

Tim Berners-Lee had used a NeXT Cube for his work at the Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. For this first Web site I downloaded the necessary software from the CERN FTP site and configured the Unix-based software. Voilà! I was online with my first Web presence! Almost 20 years later I created my first blog using WordPress, pretty much the gold standard for this type of functionality.

Update added in November, 2024:

That WordPress site ran on a “server in the cloud” with Bluehost for 11 years, and here we are in 2024! I recently completed the porting not only of the WordPress blog created on the Bluehost server, but also the content that resided on that NeXT computer all those years ago.

For current system, I am using a Raspberry Pi with 8GB of RAM with a terabyte hard drive, running on my home network with a URL assigned with a free registration with Cloudflare. 

I asked ChatGPT to compare the NexXT with a Raspberry Pi 4:

Raspberry Pi 4 Image and DescriptionThe Raspberry Pi 4 and NeXT Cube illustrate decades of progress. The Pi 4, with up to 8GB RAM, a quad-core 1.5 GHz ARM CPU, and a price under $100, is approximately 50-100 times more powerful than the 1988 NeXT Cube, which had 8MB RAM, a 25 MHz CPU, and cost $6,500—equivalent to about $16,000 today. The Pi’s immense power and affordability sharply contrast with the Cube’s premium cost and limited performance by today’s standards.

Of course, the NeXT had a monitor and a 256 MB magneto-optical drive, a pioneering storage technology for its tim, as well as a 40-320 MB hard drive. But still, the comparison after about three decades is mind-boggling.

 

About [email protected]

I retired as a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) in 2016 where I was Associate Professor of French and Instructional Pyschology & Technology. I arrived there in 1992 after my retirement as a Lieutenant Colonel from a 20-year career in the US Air Force. Most of that time was spent on the faculty at the US Air Force Academy (USAFA), during what I call my first career. For over forty years I have been creating interactive video applications for supporting language. The lab at the Language Learning Center at USAFA engaged in ground-breaking efforts conducted within a mentored learning setting. The lab’s work involved the development of technologies and instructional design strategies for the use of video in the language acquisition process as well as with architectures that support online learning and facilitate learning about learning. I have a BA in Political Science from BYU, an MBA from the University of Missouri, and a PhD in Foreign Language Education and Computer Science from The Ohio State University. At the Air Force Academy I was a key member of the team that designed what was then the largest interactive videodisc-based learning center on a college campus. When I retired from BYU I directed the ARCLITE Lab, which was involved in the creation of online learning materials for language learning as well as video and interactive technologies for learning.
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