It has been about a year since I started work on this site. Unfortunately, I’ve had to put this work on the backburner for the past few months. That’s life. But the good news is that I have recently made some time to create some new content.

This upcoming content is dynamic but also sizable. So much so, in fact, that storing the content in git and hosting with GitLab pages is no longer viable. Today, I started moving large binary files to cloud storage and have transitioned to a different web hosting service than GitLab pages. Moving forward, my plan is to store the markdown, css, html, etc. for this website in git (just as I have been) and to push large binary files to the cloud. For more than a few minutes, I considered hosting the site on my own web server. But after considering the (un)reliability of my internet service and several other factors, I ultimately decided not to pursue that as an option.

Regrettably, I will need to rethink how I secure my site with an SSL certifcate, as my previous process no longer works in this new backend environment. Moreover, I am struggling to get my site to work under the “naked” URL (i.e. without the www prefix). Please be patient as I work to resolve these issues. In the meantime, if you are viewing my site and experience issues with layouts and formatting, you might check to make sure that the URL begins with http://www.brentaustgen.com. As of June 1, these issues are resolved and the site cannot be accessed without HTTPS. Instead, you should now use https://brentaustgen.com.

That said, if you have any questions about building your own website, drop me a line below. I am at least minimally qualified now to dole out some advice.

Wishing you all well in these turbulent times,

–Brent