126 lines
5.0 KiB
Markdown
126 lines
5.0 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Site Update: The Big Domain Move To xeiaso.net"
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date: 2022-05-28
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tags:
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- dns
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---
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Hello all!
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If you take a look in the URL bar of your browser (or on the article URL section
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of your feed reader), you should see that there is a new domain name! Welcome to
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[xeiaso.net](https://xeiaso.net)!
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Hopefully nothing broke in the process of moving things over, I tried to make
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sure that everything would forward over and today I'm going to explain how I did
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that.
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I have really good SEO on my NixOS articles, and for my blog in general. I did
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not want to risk tanking that SEO when I moved domain names, so I have been
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putting this off for the better part of a year. As for why now? I got tired of
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internets complaning that the URL was "christine dot website" when I wanted to
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be called "Xe". Now you have no excuse.
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So the first step was to be sure that everything got forwarded over to the new
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domain. After buying the domain name and setting everything up in Cloudflare
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(including moving my paid plan over), I pointed the new domain at my server and
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then set up a new NixOS configuration block to have that domain name point to my
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site binary:
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```nix
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services.nginx.virtualHosts."xeiaso.net" = {
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locations."/" = {
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proxyPass = "http://unix:${toString cfg.sockPath}";
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proxyWebsockets = true;
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};
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forceSSL = cfg.useACME;
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useACMEHost = "xeiaso.net";
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extraConfig = ''
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access_log /var/log/nginx/xesite.access.log;
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'';
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};
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```
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After that was working, I then got a list of all the things that probably
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shouldn't be redirected from. In most cases, most HTTP clients should do the
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right thing when getting a permanent redirect to a new URL. However, we live in
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a fallen world where we cannot expect clients to do the right thing. Especially
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RSS feed readers.
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So I made a list of all the things that I was afraid to make permanent redirects
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for and here it is:
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* `/jsonfeed` - a JSONFeed package for Go
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([docs](https://pkg.go.dev/christine.website/jsonfeed)), I didn't want to
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break builds by issuing a permanent redirect that would not match the
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[go.mod](https://tulpa.dev/Xe/jsonfeed/src/branch/master/go.mod) file.
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* `/.within/health` - the healthcheck route used by monitoring. I didn't want to
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find out if NodePing blew up on a 301.
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* `/.within/website.within.xesite/new_post` - the URL used by the [Android
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app](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=website.christine.xesite)
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widget to let you know when a new post is published. I didn't want to find out
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if Android's HTTP library handles redirects properly or not.
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* `/blog.rss` - RSS feed readers are badly implemented. I didn't want to find
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out if it would break people's feeds entirely. I actually care about people
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that read this blog over RSS and I'm sad that poorly written feed readers
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punish this server so much.
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* `/blog.atom` - See above.
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* `/blog.json` - See above.
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Now that I have the list of URLs to not forward, I can finally write the small
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bit of Nginx config that will set up permanent forwards (HTTP status code 301)
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for every link pointing to the old domain. It will look something like this:
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```nginx
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location / {
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return 301 https://xeiaso.net$request_uri;
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}
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```
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<xeblog-conv name="Mara" mood="hacker">Note that it's using `$request_uri` and
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not just `$uri`. If you use `$uri` you run the risk of [CRLF
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injection](https://reversebrain.github.io/2021/03/29/The-story-of-Nginx-and-uri-variable/),
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which will allow any random attacker to inject HTTP headers into incoming
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requests. This is not a good thing to have happen, to say the
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least.</xeblog-conv>
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So I wrote a little bit of NixOS config that automatically bridges the gap:
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```nix
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services.nginx.virtualHosts."christine.website" = let proxyOld = {
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proxyPass = "http://unix:${toString cfg.sockPath}";
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proxyWebsockets = true;
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}; in {
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locations."/jsonfeed" = proxyOld;
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locations."/.within/health" = proxyOld;
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locations."/.within/website.within.xesite/new_post" = proxyOld;
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locations."/blog.rss" = proxyOld;
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locations."/blog.atom" = proxyOld;
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locations."/blog.json" = proxyOld;
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locations."/".extraConfig = ''
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return 301 https://xeiaso.net$request_uri;
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'';
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forceSSL = cfg.useACME;
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useACMEHost = "christine.website";
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extraConfig = ''
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access_log /var/log/nginx/xesite_old.access.log;
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'';
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};
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```
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This will point all the scary paths to the site itself and have
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`https://christine.website/whatever` get forwarded to
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`https://xeiaso.net/whatever`, this makes sure that every single link that
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anyone has ever posted will get properly forwarded. This makes link rot
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literally impossible, and helps ensure that I keep my hard-earned SEO.
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I also renamed my email address to `me@xeiaso.net`. Please update your address
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books and spam filters accordingly. Also update my name to `Xe Iaso` if you
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haven't already.
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I've got some projects in the back burner that will make this blog even better!
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Stay tuned and stay frosty.
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What was formerly known as the "christine dot website cinematic universe" is now
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known as the "xeiaso dot net cinematic universe".
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