Leilukin's Hub

Changelog: 27 July 2024

2024-07-27T00:00:00Z

Leilukin's Hub and all its subsites have been migrated to Hostinger
New blog post: Leilukin's Hub Has Migrated to Hostinger
Change the theme of Leilukin's Hub Tumbleblog to a custom theme based on the Umbra theme from Chyrp Lite
Add a link to contact me via email to the website's footer

Leilukin's Hub Has Migrated to Hostinger | Blog

2024-07-27T00:00:00Z

Starting with 25 July 2024, Leilukin's Hub and all its subsites, including its tumbleblog and fanlisting collective, have been migrated to Hostinger. In other words, I have moved hosts again almost two months after moving Leilukin's Hub to Netlify.

Before talking about why I chose Hostinger as my new website host, I want to talk about why I was considering to move hosts again.

Why Decided to Move Hosts Again

Owning Both Static and Dynamic Sites

The first major reason is that leilukin.com has evolved into more than a static site; since I have also begun to dip my toe into PHP to build dynamic sites, including a tumbleblog, fanlistings and a fanlisting.

Netlify, which previously hosted the main site of Leilukin's Hub, does not support PHP hosting, so I hosted my tumbleblog and fanlisting collective on InfinityFree, one of the very few platforms to provide PHP and MySQL website hosting for free. InfinityFree has been a decent platform for PHP and MySQL beginners to experiment with the languages, however as you might have expected, its free hosting plan comes with limitations.

Limitations of InfinityFree's Free Hosting

InfinityFree places their own security measures on websites on their free hosting plan to ensure only regular browsers can access these websites. While it is understandable to apply these security measures on free websites to prevent abuse, it can be a dealbreaker depending on your needs.

In my case, tht thing that frustrated me the most about InfinityFree's security system on their free websites is the fact that my tumbleblog was unable to provide RSS feed in usual way. Chyrp Lite, which powers my tumbleblog, includes the feature of providing blog RSS feeds, but InfinityFree's security system blocks feed readers from reading feeds from websites on their free hosting, so I had to use Feedburner to proxy my tumbleblog's feeds to get around it.

Invested in Webmastery Enough to Spend Money

Lastly, I am invested in building my own websites enough to spend money on them, as already evident in my purchase and registration of a custom domain name leilukin.com for this website.

That said, I do need to consider carefully about how much money I am going to spend on my hobbies, which factors in why I eventually chose Hostinger to host my websites.

Why Hostinger

Affordable Price with Regional Pricing

The biggest draw about Hostinger is its pricing — it is not only cheap, but also offering regional pricing. This is a huge deal for people who live in countries with weaker currencies than US Dollars and Euro, as the pricing scales to the level we are more comfortable spending, without worrying about currency conversion rates.

For reference, as of this writing, 1 USD equals approximately 4.6 Malaysian Ringgit (MYR), while the minimum wage in Malaysia is 1,500 MYR, which approximately equals to 321.03 USD, per month. Therefore, if a Malaysian like me is going to spend money, every USD counts.

Compare the pricing of the 48-month Premium Shared Hosting plan, which was what I ended up spending to host my websites, of Hostinger.my to Hostinger.com: The plan costs 7.99 per month in MYR (approximately 1.71 USD), while 2.99 per month in USD (approximately 13.97 MYR). This means I ended up saving almost 6 MYR per month by purchasing the plan on the Malaysian branch of Hostinger. This is just comparing Hostinger's own hosting plan with different currencies, let alone comparing Hostinger's hosting plan to its competitors.

As a bonus, being able to purchase Hostinger's hosting plans in Malaysian Ringgit means I can pay by directly transferring money from a Malaysian bank account.

Being cheap is not even the only reason I chose Hostinger; what is better than being cheap is to provide many, many features at the same time.

Many, Many Features at a Cheap Price

The cheap price of the Premium Shared Hosting Plan of Hostinger is jam-packed with many features, including but not limited to:

Ability to create up to 100 websites (Netlify allows you to deploy 500 sites, but 100 sites are still significantly more than enough for average users)
100 GB SSD storage
Unlimited bandwidth (InfinityFree's free hosting also allows unlimited bandwidth, but Netlify has a limit of 100GB per month)
Unlimited MySQL databases (while Infinity has a limit of 400 databases)
Email accounts included for free
Built-in Git support, which allows me to continue deploying my main site from its Git repository
And more!

On the subject of email accounts, it is worth pointing out that Hostinger's Premium Shared Hosting plan allows you to create an email account for each website you made, and you can have up to 100 addresses and forwarders for each email account.

A Birthday Present for Myself

Last but not least, another motivator for me to purchase a premium website hosting plan for my websites now is the fact that my birthday is coming soon on July 28, so I spent money on premium hosting for my websites as a birthday present for myself this year.

Domain Names Remaining at Porkbun

While Hostinger provides domain registration and transfer service, I chose to have the leilukin.com domain name stay with Porkbun, because I already spent money on the domain name, so Hostinger's hosting plan providing domain name registration for free for the first year does not benefit me.

In addition, Porkbun's renewal rate for domain names is cheaper than Hostinger. For example, Porkbun renews the .com domain extension at 10.37 USD per year, while Hostinger renews at 15.99 USD per year. Even the Malaysian Ringgit pricing of Hostinger's domain renewal rate for .com, 55.99 MYR per year, is still more expansive than Porkbun's approximately 48.3 MYR per year rate.

Wrapping Up

Leilukin's Hub's migration to Hostinger has been smooth. There was no significant change on the front end of my websites after the switch, aside from changing the theme of my tumbleblog, so my websites will continue to operate as usual, as well as improved site performance for my tumbleblog and fanlisting collective by loading custom web fonts faster to the extent I intended by preloading the fonts.

Moving hosts for my website again reminds me of one of the benefits of owning a custom domain name of making the host migration more seamless, since it saves the trouble of having to change and update my website's address every time I move hosts.

Changelog: 22 July 2024

2024-07-22T00:00:00Z

Add a Salad Magazine section to my Adoptables pages.

Changelog: 21 July 2024

2024-07-21T00:00:00Z

Add a section for the Kitty Friends Pixel Club to my Adoptables page, including my kitty friends!

Changelog: 20 July 2024

2024-07-20T00:00:00Z

Remake the mobile version of navigation menu by using the HTML popover attirbutes, allowing the navigation menu to be dismissed without JavaScript

Changelog: 18 July 2024

2024-07-18T00:00:00Z

Add list of web cliques I joined to the home page
Add pixel cliques I joined to the Adoptables page
Add a Joined tab to the Links page to list the web cliques and widgets of web rings I joined, as well as linking to my fanlisting collective.
Upgrade Eleventy to version 3.0
Bundle page-specific CSS and JavaScript in the <head> element with Eleventy 3.0's built-in bundle plugin

Changelog: 13 July 2024

2024-07-13T00:00:00Z

Add an inline SVG icon to external links
Use inline SVG for Font Awesome icons to remove the need of hosting Font Awesome assets
Add dark mode support for Cassette Beasts shrine based on user preference in system setting

Changelog: 6 July 2024

2024-07-06T00:00:00Z

Implement accessible tooltips that meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 success criterion for 1.4.13: Content on Hover or Focus (Level AA), by utilising Scott O'Hara's ARIA Tooltips script. (Thank you Vera for your feedback on my previous implementation of the tooltips)

Changelog: 3 July 2024

2024-07-03T00:00:00Z

Add Articles and Resources tabs to the links page.
Show visible stylised tooltips for some website buttons on mouse hover or keyboard focus (thanks to Solaria's web accessibility guide for the inspiration).
Add a list of webrings my website is part of to the home page.

Changelog: 2 July 2024

2024-07-02T00:00:00Z

The main site header now would display a Disability Pride Month blurb and the disability pride flag during July
My fanlisting collective and Cassette Beasts fanlisting launched!
Projects page:
- Reorganised pages for my video game mods into their own directory
- Add code projects, started with BellaBuffs with PHPMailer Integration
New blog post: Cassette Beasts Fanlisting and My Fanlisting Collective Launched
Links page:
- Add tabs to sort my link collection by category (thanks to Kalechips' JavaScript-free tabs code scnippet for the inspiration)
- Add webmastery resources

Cassette Beasts Fanlisting and My Fanlisting Collective Launched | Blog

2024-07-02T00:00:00Z

I am incredibly excited to announce the official launch of Land of Confusion, The Fanlistings Network-approved fanlisting for Cassette Beasts, and Beehive, my fanlisting collective! 🥳

If you are a fan of Cassette Beasts, feel free to join my fanlisting! If you like fanlistings as well, feel free to check out my fanlisting collective!

In addition, in light of the launch of my first fanlisting, I am also releasing my fork of BellaBuffs, the fanlisting script written in PHP, with integration of PHPMailer, the email sending library!

My fanlisting collective and Cassette Beasts fanlisting are hosted on InfinityFree, since Netlify, which currently hosts the main site of Leilukin's Hub, does not support PHP.

A Milestone

In my previous post, I announced that The Fanlistings Network (also known as TFL.org) had approved my application for building and running a fanlisting for Cassette Beasts.

After completing the Cassette Beasts fanlisting on 30 June 2024, I submitted a finished form to TFL.org to let them know that I have finished my fanlisting. The Fanlistings Network responded by emailing me and informing me thatthey have added the URL of my Cassette Beasts fanlisting to the list of approved fanlistings under the Games category and the Computer, Console, & Video Games subcategory (view the web archive version).

The launch of my Cassette Beasts fanlisting is a major moment for me as both a webmaster and a Cassette Beasts fan, as I am enthusiastic about the fact that the very first fanlisting I create would be for my absolute favourite video game.

First Foray in PHP

My Cassette Beasts fanlisting is powered by BellaBuffs. I was new to PHP when I started considering building fanlistings myself, as my main site Leilukin's Hub is a static site, so building the Cassette Beasts fanlisting was my first foray in learning to code in PHP.

Before starting to actually work on building the Cassette Beasts fanlisting, I tried out Enthusiast, the other commonly used fanlisting script also written in PHP. I tried Erin's fork of Enthusiast specifically, since InfinityFree uses version 8.2 of PHP Enthusiast also has extra features that BellaBuffs does not have, including allowing fanlisting members to set passwords and even managing the entire fanlisting collective.

Unfortunately, I encountered a critical issue with Enthusiast when I tried it: whenever I added a fanlisting to my joined fanlisting list in the admin panel, the home page of the fanlisting collective would go completely blank. I do not know the cause of the issue, and I was not familiar enough with PHP to be confident in attempting to investigate the entire fanlisting collective code just to find the culprit, especially when it uses MySQL database to store data, adding another complexity in troubleshooting it.

Therefore, I later tried BellaBuffs, and chose BellaBuffs as the script to power my fanlistings, then code my own fanlisting collective myself.

There were a few setbacks I encountered when I was building the Cassette Beasts fanlisting with BellaBuffs and hosting the fanlisting on InfinityFree — I learned that InfinityFree's free hosting plan does not support PHP mail() function, which is used by BellaBuffs.

Integrating PHPMailer into BellaBuffs

BellaBuffs includes the optional features to email new members after submitting the join form, email the fanlisting admin when a new member joins or email new members when their applications were approved. The original BellaBuffs script achieved this by using PHP's built-in mail() feature, which unfortunately the free hosting of InfinityFree does not support, so I had to figure out an alternative way for my fanlisting on InfinityFree to send emails.

Thankfully, InfinityFree suggested using PHPMailer, and even providing a contact form powered by PHPMailer as a sample. As a result, I spent time in trying to incorporate PHPMailer into BellaBuffs based on the InfinityFree's PHPMailer contact form code, and voilà, I did it!

I am glad that despite my inexperience in PHP, I was able to apply the programming knowledge I learned from building my main site and taking online coding courses to build my fanlisting.

After successfully setting up the Cassette Beasts fanlisting, I decided to fork BellaBuffs and release my version of the fanlisting script with PHPMailer integration, in case there are others who want to use BellaBuffs to build fanlistings, but cannot or do not want to use the PHP mail() function.

You can download my BellaBuffs fork and learn about how to use it from its GitHub repository.

Building Beehive

To give myself more practice in PHP as I built my first fanlisting, I decided to code my fanlisting collective in PHP as well.

I decided to name my fanlisting collective Beehive, since I have been using my drawing of a bee with a pair of glasses as my main avatar on the Internet, I figured it would be a good idea to name a subsite of mine something related to bees.

Furthermore, Beehive is a fitting name for a fanlisting collective, as beehives house honey bees, while this website houses all the fanlistings I created, maintain, joined and have applied to join.

Welcome to Beehive! 🐝

Changelog: 27 June 2024

2024-06-27T00:00:00Z

Added a Spotlight Crowdfunding Campaigns section to my Palestine masterlist to highlight fundraising campaigns that I have been asked to help and share by Palestinians on Tumblr, and that have been vetted by other Palestinians on Tumblr.

Changelog: 26 June 2024

2024-06-26T00:00:00Z

Added my other websites to my Projects page.

Changelog: 24 June 2024

2024-06-24T00:00:00Z

New blog post: My Cassette Beasts Fanlisting Application has been Approved

My Cassette Beasts Fanlisting Application has been Approved | Blog

2024-06-24T00:00:00Z

On 22 June 2024, I submitted an application form to The Fanlistings Network, also known as TFL.org, to build and run a Cassette Beasts fanlisting, and now TFL.org has approved my application! Cassette Beasts is now on TFL.org's approved list under the Games category and the Computer, Console, & Video Games subcategory (view the web archive version).

What is a fanlisting?

For those who do not know what a fanlisting is, TFL.org has defined fanslitings as below:

A fanlisting is simply an online listing of fans of a subject, such as a TV show, actor, or musician, that is created by an individual and open for fans from around the world to join. There are no costs, and the only requirements to join a fanlisting are your name and country. Fanlistings do not have to be large sites (although some are) - they are just a place where you can have your name listed along with other fans of the same subject. TheFanlistings.org is the original (but not only) web directory for fanlistings, dedicated to uniting fans across the globe.

This is a major moment for me as both a webmaster and a Cassette Beasts fan. As a webmaster, I have been applying and joining fanlistings since I built my own website, as I have always found fanlistings a neat idea to gather and discover other people who share your interests across the world, as listing your country is a requirement when you apply to join a fanlisting. Recently, I have been considering building and running a fanlisting myself, with Cassette Beasts being my first choice since there is no fanlisting for Cassette Beasts yet. I began to dabble in PHP, so I can use a script like BellaBuffs to build a fanlisting. With my application approved by The Fanlistings Network, the Cassette Beasts fanlisting will be the first fanlisting I build and run.

Cassette Beasts has become my favourite video game ever since I started playing it in July 2023, to the extent that not only I have a Cassette Beasts shrine on my website, I had already begun to consider creating the shrine even before beating the main campaign. I have also been tirelessly recommending the game throughout various online spaces. Therefore, I am honoured to be given this opportunity to build and run a fanlisting for Cassette Beasts that is approved by The Fanlistings Network, to add to my ongoing effort to boost the game's visibility.

The Cassette Beasts fanlisting is not ready yet at this moment, especially since I was not certain if The Fanlistings Network would approve my application, but now with their approval, I am going to work on building the Cassette Beasts fanlisting. TFL.org has a rule that fanlisting owners need to complete their fanlisting within four weeks, so stay tuned for upcoming updates for my Cassette Beasts fanlisting!

Now that I will be running my own fanlisting, I will be also creating a fanlisting collective to gather all fanlistings I own, join and have applied to in one place. Since Netlify, which currently hosts the main site of Leilukin's Hub, does not support PHP, I will be hosting my fanlisting collective, including my Cassette Beasts fanlisting, on InfinityFree.

Changelog: 23 June 2024

2024-06-23T00:00:00Z

Add Adoptables page.

Changelog: 21 June 2024

2024-06-21T00:00:00Z

Leilukin's Hub now has a tumbleblog at tumbleblog.leilukin.com! Read the latest blog post to learn more: Leilukin's Hub Tumbleblog Launched.

Leilukin's Hub Tumbleblog Launched | Blog

2024-06-21T00:00:00Z

Leilukin's Hub now has a tumbleblog at tumbleblog.leilukin.com!

I have been considering the idea of creating a microblog or tumbleblog for my website. The main site of Leilukin's Hub already has a blog, but I also want another blog for shorter or more casual posts to document my thoughts and various stuff I find interesting or inspirational, especially ones that I am not sure how or where to put in the main site of Leilukin's Hub yet.

Tumblr has served me adequately for this purpose, which is one of the reasons it remains the social media platform I am the most active on since 2011 (yes, this means I have been on Tumblr for 13 years at this point). However, one of the reasons I eventually decided to create my own website was to not relying on social media to share my creations and interests. Therefore, an ideal Tumblr-style microblog for Leilukin's Hub would be self-hosted and sharing the same domain name of leilukin.com. After struggling to figure out how to implement a tumbleblog for Leilukin's Hub, I finally discovered the ideal blogging engine for my needs: Chyrp Lite.

Chyrp Lite has everything I am looking for to build a self-hosted Tumblr-style blog. The website explicitly states that you can have a tumbleblog with the blogging engine, with feathers that allow you to make not only text posts, but also image posts, audio posts, video posts, quote posts, link posts and even posts with files attached to allow visitors to download. Chyrp Lite is written in PHP, so it cannot be hosted on platforms that support static sites only, such as Neocities, GitHub Pages, Netlify (which is where leilukin.com is currently hosted on), etc. This is where InfinityFree came in.

InfinityFree is among the few hosting platforms that provides PHP and MySQL support for free, so I had created an InfinityFree account to start learning about PHP, even before discovering Chyrp Lite. In addition, InfinityFree supports custom domain without additional charges, so I have also added the leilukin.com domain name to my InfinityFree account, in case I need to host something with PHP and want to use a subdomain of leilukin.com for it. Now, I got to make use of what I learned to build this tumbleblog for Leilukin's Hub.

I started with adding a tumbleblog.leilukin.com custom subdomain to InfinityFree, configuring the DNS records on Porkbun (which manages the leilukin.com domain name), and requesting a free SSL certificate from InfinityFree to add HTTPS support to this blog. After making sure the tumbleblog.leilukin.com subdomain is ready, I followed the Quick Start Guide to set up Chyrp Lite, by uploading the blogging engine's files to InfinityFree with FTP, creating a MySQL database for this tumbleblog, and installing Chyrp Lite into my InfinityFree server. At last, I successfully installed Chyrp Lite on InfinityFree.

Leilukin's Hub Tumbleblog is now officially launched! 🥳

Changelog: 19 June 2024

2024-06-19T00:00:00Z

Add new article: Palestine Masterlist.

Palestine Masterlist | Articles

2024-06-19T00:00:00Z

(Credit to rosemary for the Stand with Palestine button)

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

Here, I am compiling a list of resources related to Palestine. This list is not comprehensive by any means, but I still want to do my part in using my platform to support an important cause.

Educate Yourself

Articles

What is the Ethical Way to Climb Out of Hell? by The Grief Witch (17 October 2023)

Donations and Charities

Boycotts

BDS Movement
Attention to website owners: Boycott Wix — The BDS movement has listed Wix as an organic boycott target, meaning the BDS movement did not initiate this grassroots boycott campaign, but supports it due to the boycotted brand's complicity in Israel's genocide and apartheid against Palestinians.

Spotlight Crowdfunding Campaigns

There have been Palestinians who reached out to me on Tumblr to ask for help with sharing their fundraising campaigns, so I am using my platform to share these campaigns. These campaigns have been verified by other Palestinians on Tumblr, so I encourage you to help to donate and share.

Help...Save a Pregnant Mother's Life and Support Her Family (verified by nabulsi and 90-ghost)
Help Sahar and Her Family to Evacuate Gaza (verified by el-shab-hussein)
Help Us Escape Gaza: A Mother's Plea for Safety (#182 in el-shab-hussein and nabulsi’s Vetted Gaza Fundraiser List)
From War to Education: Abdelrahman Resilient Journey (verified by nabulsi and 90-ghost)
Please Help Tahani save her children and husband (verified by el-shab-hussein)
Please help Shamaly family SURVIVE Gaza & start a new life! (verified by nabulsi)
Help us reunite with our kids who are stuck in Gaza (verified by 90-ghost)
Urgent ! Save kids life . (verified by 90-ghost)
Trapped Family in Gaza Appeals for Help to Survive (verified by nabulsi, fairuzfan and 90-ghost)
Help Ahmed family to travel to a save place (veridied by nabulsi)
Help my family escape Gaza (verified by nabulsi)
Hope for Gaza: Support Ashraf's Family Rebuild Their Lives (verified by 90-ghost)
Help Zaen and Yehya to get out of Gaza (verified by 90-ghost)
A Father's Plea: Help Save My Family (verified by el-shab-hussein)
Help Moamen Majed rebuild his life after the war (verified by 90-ghost)
Save Gaza: A Brighter Future for Aya and Her Family (verified by 90-ghost)
EMERGENCY: help my relatives evacuate to safety (verified by 90-ghost)
Support Safaa's Quest To Get Her Family To Safety (verified by 90-ghost)
Help Doaa Rebuild Her Sewing Business (verified by 90-ghost)
Help the Munna Tashmali Family Rebuild Their Home and Future (verified by nabulsi)
Help Gaza Family Evacuate to Safety (verified by 90-ghost)
Help us for the sake of God (verified by 90-ghost)
we need help (verified by 90-ghost)
Help little children of Gaza stay safe and alive! (verified by nabulsi)
Support Fatima's Family in Gaza After Heartbreaking Tragedy (verified by 90-ghost)
Get my relatives out of Gaza (verified by 90-ghost)
Help Shaima's family reunite in Egypt (#141 in el-shab-hussein and nabulsi’s Vetted Gaza Fundraiser List)
Help Yousef&Family Escape From War&Secure Treatment for son (verified by 90-ghost)
Save Ibrahim and his children (verified by 90-ghost)