I Built My Own Little Corner of the Internet
I finally got myself a domain.
suraiyaanr.com
And yes, I built the website myself.
Which sounds like a pretty normal thing for a software developer to say, but for me, this website feels a little more personal than just another project.
Because, technically, this isn't my first little corner of the internet.
Apparently, I've Always Wanted My Own Little Corner
I don't remember exactly when I first started getting interested in making things on the internet, but I do remember playing around with customisable profiles and layouts on MySpace when I was in primary school.
Yes.
Primary school. 😂
Back then, I obviously wasn't thinking about web development, software engineering, or infrastructure. I just thought it was cool that you could customise things.
Change the layout.
Play with colours.
Move things around.
Add stuff to your profile.
Make it look a little more like you.
I wasn't exactly building websites from scratch, but I was already enjoying the idea of taking something that existed and making it feel like mine.
Then came Blogspot.
Back in school, I had a blog where I wrote about pretty much anything.
Life.
Random thoughts.
Things that happened that day.
Things I was excited about.
Things I was probably overthinking.
And occasionally, things that probably didn't deserve an entire blog post. 😂
I also spent a surprising amount of time editing the template.
Changing the layout.
Tweaking HTML.
Trying different designs.
Breaking something.
Fixing it.
Changing it again because I suddenly didn't like how it looked anymore.
Looking back, it was probably one of my earliest experiences of enjoying the process of making something on the internet feel personal.
I didn't know it at the time, but I think I just really liked building things.
Then life happened.
I stopped writing.
The blog disappeared somewhere into the internet.
And I moved on.
Fast Forward A Few Years
These days, I work as a software developer.
Most of my experience has been on the development side of things.
Laravel.
Vue.
APIs.
Databases.
Frontend.
Backend.
Writing code.
Fixing bugs.
Breaking things.
Fixing the things I just broke.
And occasionally wondering why something worked perfectly yesterday but decided to betray me today.
Basically, the usual software developer experience.
😂
But one thing I realised over the years was that my exposure was much more focused on building the application rather than everything that happens after the application is built.
I could write the code.
I could work with databases.
I could build APIs.
I could build a frontend.
But when it came to things like servers, Linux, Nginx, DNS, deployment, SSL, infrastructure and monitoring, there were still a lot of things I wanted to understand better.
And I didn't really want to learn those things by just reading about them.
I wanted to break something.
Preferably my own thing.
So I thought:
Why not use my personal website as an excuse?
And that's basically how this website came to life.
So I Built It Myself
The website itself is a Laravel application.
The backend is built with Laravel, with MySQL handling the database.
The application is served through Nginx and PHP-FPM.
The source code lives in Git, and when I deploy, the server pulls the latest changes from the repository.
Nothing particularly fancy.
And honestly, that wasn't really the point.
I wasn't trying to build some ridiculously complicated infrastructure architecture just so I could put a bunch of fancy technologies on a diagram.
I wanted to understand what actually happens between:
write code → push code → server → web server → application → database → browser
Because when you're developing locally, it's very easy to think:
npm run devand everything magically appears.
Production is where the fun begins. 😂
Then I Fell Into the Infrastructure Rabbit Hole
Once I started setting things up, I realised there were a lot more pieces involved than just “put the website online”.
There was the server.
Linux.
Nginx.
PHP-FPM.
MySQL.
DNS.
SSL.
SSH.
Cloudflare.
Deployment.
Permissions.
Services.
Logs.
Monitoring.
And probably about 17 different ways to accidentally break something.
I ended up running the website from my own setup at home.
For the internet-facing side, I'm using Cloudflare for the domain and DNS, and Cloudflare Tunnel to expose the website without opening ports on my home router.
That part was particularly interesting to me because I wanted to avoid the whole:
“Open this port on your router and hope for the best.”
approach.
With the tunnel, the connection goes through Cloudflare instead.
So now my little personal website is basically sitting inside my house, while Cloudflare handles the connection between it and the outside world.
Which is kind of funny when you think about it.
Someone can visit my website from somewhere on the internet...
...and the request eventually reaches a computer sitting in my house.
😂
And Then I Wanted SSH
Once the website was accessible, naturally I thought:
“Okay, but can I SSH into this thing remotely?”
Apparently, yes.
So I set that up too.
I can SSH into my server remotely through the Cloudflare Tunnel.
At some point, I realised I had gone from:
“I just need a portfolio website.”
to:
“I need remote server access.”
This is how rabbit holes work.
You start with one innocent little task and suddenly you're reading logs at midnight wondering why a service restarted.
Obviously, I Needed Monitoring
Once you have a website running from your own machine, there's one tiny problem.
You can't exactly sit there staring at it all day thinking:
“Is the website still alive?”
So I decided to add monitoring.
At first, the idea was simple.
Check whether the Cloudflare Tunnel is running.
Check whether the website responds.
Check disk usage.
If something goes wrong, let me know.
But because apparently simply sending an email wasn't chaotic enough, I decided to build a small Discord bot for it.
🤖
Now I have my own little Discord setup where I can get alerts when something goes wrong.
Tunnel down?
Discord.
Website unavailable?
Discord.
Disk usage getting too high?
Discord.
Something recovers?
Discord again.
It's honestly pretty satisfying.
Instead of constantly checking whether everything is okay, I can just let the server tell me when it isn't.
Which is probably the most important lesson I've learned from this whole thing:
Monitoring is basically outsourcing your anxiety to a bot.
😂
The Setup Ended Up Looking Something Like This
At a very simplified level:
Internet
│
▼
Cloudflare
│
Cloudflare Tunnel
│
▼
My Home PC
│
Nginx
│
PHP-FPM
│
Laravel
│
MySQLAnd somewhere on the side:
Server / Services
│
▼
Monitoring
│
▼
Discord Bot
│
▼
🔔 AlertsIt's not a massive production infrastructure.
It's not Kubernetes.
It's not some distributed system running across 15 regions.
It's just my personal website.
But that's exactly why I like it.
It's small enough that I can understand the whole thing.
I know what's running.
I know where the application lives.
I know how the request reaches it.
I know where the database is.
I know how I access the server.
I know how the domain points to it.
And if something breaks, I can actually go in and figure out why.
And Yes, I Used AI
I feel like this probably needs to be said because it's 2026 and pretending otherwise would be silly.
Yes.
AI was involved.
I use AI quite a lot during development.
It helps me move faster.
It helps me explore unfamiliar concepts.
It helps me troubleshoot.
It helps me understand documentation.
Sometimes it saves me from staring at the same error message for 40 minutes.
And sometimes it confidently suggests something that makes absolutely no sense.
So, you know.
Balanced relationship. 😂
But there's an important distinction I care about.
Using AI doesn't mean I want to blindly copy whatever it gives me.
This website is still custom-built.
I know what is running behind it.
I know how the pieces connect.
I've configured the server.
I've configured the web server.
I've configured the domain and DNS.
I've worked through the deployment.
I've set up the tunnel.
I've set up the monitoring.
And when something breaks, I can go into the server and investigate it.
Because if AI suddenly disappears tomorrow...
I'll probably panic for five minutes.
Then I'll open the terminal and say:
“Okay. Time to read the logs.”
😂
And honestly, I think that's a pretty important skill to have.
AI can help me write code faster.
It can help me learn.
It can suggest solutions.
But I still want to understand why something works.
Otherwise, the moment something goes slightly outside the happy path, I'm just sitting there staring at a screen hoping the AI knows what happened.
That's not really the kind of developer I want to be.
This Website Is More Than a Portfolio
Originally, I just wanted a personal website.
Something where I could put my resume.
My projects.
Some information about myself.
Maybe a few links.
Something that would show up when someone searched for me.
But somewhere along the way, it became something else.
It became a playground.
A place where I could experiment with things I don't normally get to work with.
A place where I could learn more about Linux, servers, deployment, DNS, networking and monitoring by actually doing it.
And because it's my own website, I don't have to worry about breaking a client's production environment while experimenting.
If I break something here?
Well...
It's my website.
I'll fix it.
Hopefully before anyone notices. 😂
And Somehow, I'm Blogging Again
There's another reason this website feels a little nostalgic.
It has a blog.
Which brings me right back to where this whole thing started.
MySpace.
Then Blogspot.
Then years of not really writing.
And now, somehow, I'm here again.
Except this time, instead of changing a Blogspot template, I'm building the actual website.
The funny thing is that the reason I want to blog hasn't changed that much.
I still want somewhere to write about random things.
The difference is that I'm older now, and hopefully slightly wiser.
So there will probably be some tech posts.
Things I learned.
Things I built.
Things that broke.
Deployment problems I somehow survived.
Random technical rabbit holes I fell into at 2 AM.
But I don't want this to become one of those blogs where every post starts with:
“In this tutorial, we will…”
That's not really me.
I also want to write about places I've been.
Food I've tried.
Things I find interesting.
Experiences worth remembering.
Random thoughts.
Maybe some personal stories.
Basically, whatever feels worth putting into words.
Some posts might be useful.
Some might be completely unnecessary.
Some might be both.
That's okay.
A Little Corner of the Internet
I think that's what I like most about having my own domain.
It's mine.
Not a social media profile.
Not a portfolio template someone else designed.
Not a page that looks exactly like everyone else's.
Just a little corner of the internet that I built.
It's probably going to change over time.
The design will change.
The projects will change.
The blog will grow.
I'll probably rebuild parts of it because I suddenly decide I don't like something.
There will probably be bugs.
There will definitely be logs.
And there will almost certainly be another 500 Internal Server Error waiting for me somewhere.
But that's part of the fun.
Looking back, there's actually a funny little progression here.
As a kid, I was playing around with MySpace profiles.
Then I was tweaking Blogspot templates and HTML.
Then I became a software developer.
And now I'm building and hosting my own website, learning the infrastructure behind it, setting up monitoring, and writing on it again.
Maybe I haven't changed that much after all.
I still just like making things on the internet feel like mine.
Just with slightly more Linux now.
And significantly more responsibility when something breaks. 😂
So, welcome to my little corner of the internet.
Things I learned, built, experienced, or am still figuring out.
Welcome to suraiyaanr.com 🎉