Today, I’ve moved my blog CMS away from Wix(Phew!). While Wix made it easy to get started, something had been nudging me for months to move away. I’d mentioned it long ago but never found the time or headspace to act on it. Recently, with regular visits to the IndieWeb community and having people to exchange ideas with, I finally found the motivation. Today, my blog runs on my own stack, with my data securely stored in PostgreSQL.

[CLIENT]
  ↓ (API requests)
[AWS]
 ├── [SERVER] (Express/Node.js inside Docker)
 │    ↔ [DATABASE] (PostgreSQL)
 │
 └── [DOCKER]
     ├── SERVER Container
     └── DATABASE Container

[CLIENT]
  ↔ Auth from DATABASE
  ↔ Posts fetched from DATABASE

[CI/CD]
  → Updates SERVER (Docker deployment)

This is just the first step.

I plan to move away from AWS as well. Not because it’s bad (it’s not), but because I've been thinking of building some home bots and automation setups for personal projects, so moving to a simpler, self-managed setup just makes sense. It gives me the flexibility to experiment without being locked into heavy cloud infra.

This transition feels like moving from “hosted” to “built,” and it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while.

Along the way, I’ve added some small iterations:

  • A working cms system, so I can manage my content directly.
  • An rss-feed, which I never had before.
  • My content now sits neatly in PostgreSQL instead of being locked in some closed platform.
  • Static file hosting and basic CI/CD are set up, making future updates easier.

Nothing fancy. No over-engineering. Just a minimal setup that works, and more importantly, something that I understand and have control end-to-end.

At some point, I also want to do immich for managing my own photos and videos, both for the blog and for personal storage. Google Photos works, but I’d prefer starting with a simpler, self-managed setup where I can permanently manage some of my core memories.

I’ll keep improving things as I go. For now, this feels like a good place to be.