Skip to main content
  1. Posts/

My Blog is Live

·508 words·3 mins
liuzhilong62
Author
liuzhilong62
PostgreSQL DBA. Writing about database internals, production cases, and source code analysis.

It’s Live!
#

The blog is finally live.

URL: https://lastdba.com

Accessible from China, mobile-friendly too.

76 articles — all PostgreSQL writing from the past few years: case studies, internals, source code analysis, paper deep reads.

This is a proper launch: new framework, new domain, new theme — rebuilt from the ground up.

Highlights
#

Clean Interface

Minimalist, reader-friendly design with a useful search feature.

image-20260517000626083

Framework: Jekyll → Hugo

Version 1: Jekyll + minima theme + 2000 lines of CSS

Version 2: Hugo + Blowfish theme + 0 lines of CSS

V1 was decent, but building the UI myself was exhausting. I remembered vonng had written an article about website architecture choices, so I just went and borrowed from it. I explained the architecture to AI and had it learn from vonng.com — the page quality jumped up a level instantly. A few more tweaks and it was done.

Domain: github.io → lastdba.com

Bought lastdba.com, configured Cloudflare. GitHub Pages with custom domain, free HTTPS certificate, auto-renewal. Now accessible without VPN!

Image Localization

Previously, article images were scattered everywhere — CSDN CDN, GitHub PicBed, Modb OSS. CSDN has hotlink protection. GitHub PicBed on foreign networks often failed to load domestically. This time I had AI consolidate everything to local paths. No more worrying about image hosts going down. Cross-network image loading problems solved — very good.

Reflections on Going Live
#

I’d actually set up a blog URL before — just fork a blog project and deploy via GitHub Pages. The domain was liuzhilong62.github.io/blogs. But being somewhat of a quality freak (not really), the results were mediocre so I took it down. Later I just used the GitHub repo as my blog, without even enabling Pages. Recently, with more free time for various reasons, I revisited this and used Hermes to build the blog from scratch.

As a DBA and backend engineer, I know nothing about frontend stuff like Jekyll, Hugo, Blowfish, CSS. I just give Hermes a target and it does the work. When it explains things to me I don’t understand (and I’m too embarrassed to admit it), I basically just say “keep going.” I check the result in the browser — if I’m satisfied, great; occasionally I say “revert this.”

Honestly, my biggest takeaway from switching to Hugo wasn’t technical — it was “don’t reinvent the wheel.” I’d spent so much time hand-coding dark mode, TOC, search, only to discover a theme swap includes it all, and theirs looks better than mine.

Also, after hooking up lastdba.com, the blog suddenly felt “official.” liuzhilong62.github.io/blogs felt like a personal experiment; now it feels like a real website. Same content, different feeling.

What It Cost
#

All expenses:

ItemCost
lastdba.com domain (Cloudflare, 1 year)¥70
GitHub Pages hosting¥0
Hugo framework¥0
Blowfish theme¥0
Cloudflare DNS + CDN¥0
Tokens¥60
Total¥130

Possibly the most cost-effective personal website solution out there.


Finally
#

Some details may not be polished — feedback, bug reports, and optimization suggestions welcome.

I’ll likely keep updating.

Reference
#

https://vonng.com/

Original link: https://lastdba.com/2026/05/16/个人博客上线/

Related

My 2025 Year-End Summary

·2411 words·12 mins
As a DBA # As a DBA, I strongly believe in first principles and information theory when it comes to problem analysis. A DBA needs to deeply understand the system, understand PostgreSQL, to explain anomalies from first principles. For example, in the first half of the year I spent considerable effort understanding Linux memory, exploring the essence of memory issues and their solutions. At the same time, this year I took a step forward in system operations — no longer focusing solely on technical problems and handling, but more on providing solutions. These should encompass thinking across the PostgreSQL database technology dimension, the system dimension, and the management dimension.

My 2024 Year-End Summary

·1910 words·9 mins
As a DBA # 2023 was a year of comprehensive PostgreSQL learning for me, and 2024 has been a year of comprehensive PostgreSQL operations. There’s actually a lot of material I really want to dive into but haven’t had the time. This year was mainly case analysis — I could only supplement my foundational knowledge here and there. Mid-year there was a discussion about “will DBAs be eliminated in the cloud era.” This discussion left a deep impression on me. I thought about many things afterward — why do others seem to have so few things to deal with while I, as a DBA, have so much? I even went into cloud computing groups to debate about it, and I actually gained something from it. Different perspectives lead to unexpected conclusions. The conclusion of the debate may boil down to just one thing: DBAs are providing 1510 emotional value to their leaders.

Getting Started with pg_rewind

·842 words·4 mins
What is pg_rewind? # pg_rewind is a PostgreSQL-provided tool. When the timelines of two PG instances diverge, pg_rewind can synchronize them. (For example, the primary is running, the standby failover has been running for a while — at this point the primary and standby timelines have diverged.) pg_rewind compares the sizes of files between the source and target, then copies differing files from source to target, including configuration files. However, it does not compare unchanged files, so pg_rewind runs efficiently on large databases with few changes.