About itsbillw

What is itsbillw.eu?
itsbillw.eu is my personal website, built and hosted on a Raspberry Pi running DietPi OS. It serves as a hub for my projects, experiments with FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), and a playground for learning and sharing ideas.

What’s the project about?
The website stems from discovering Django while learning Python some years ago. After many iterations, I eventually began to publish my sites using PythonAnywhere. Primarily, I experimented with Django and Flask and played with various frontends and databases.
This project is a culmination of several interests - FOSS, Raspberry Pis (and other SBCs), and a desire to help demystify data. This current incarnation is a Django website with MariaDB database and Bootstrap helping out in the frontend all being controlled through NGINX. It's running on a Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB RAM) with an Aegon One M.2 SSD case providing 500GB storage and DietPi OS. Alongside the website, I have NextCloud, MinIO, Plex and some other tools running. Monitoring is with Netdata and some basic checks on Uptime Robot. I had gathered all the equipment required for this project over the years and estimate a maximum spend of around €250. Based on readings from a Tapo smartplug, the whole home server setup has energy costs under €10 per year (~€0.75/month).

What’s the significance of the name ‘itsbillw’?
Bill is a nickname I've had since my teenage years - an evolution of my surname in a Dublin accent - and a long time ago I thought I was being clever choosing itsbillw as my email address so when people asked for my email, it might cause a bit of confusion. I can safely safe it causes more frustration than confusion ("no - it's itsbillw", not just billw) but it has persisted and now most of my social media handles also use itsbillw in some way.