That said, I have installed some of this software before, the old fashioned way, and the hardest part is remembering how to use all the UNIX commands that allow one to manipulate the files (I imagine even there it is not that terrible anymore, what with all the packaging systems the Debian clones have brought to Linux – I had to compile phpBB the traditional UNIX way the last time I did it). These commands are, for the most part, simply combinations of “wget”, “mv”, “cd”, “ls -la “, “chmod”, “chown”, “unzip “,”tar -xvzf”, and, if things go really wrong, “rm -R”…

Although I spent more time than I should have configuring WordPress (its plethora of options makes such tinkering irresistible — and Dreamhost’s php and apache installs seem to be very restrictive, which might explain why some of the backend plugins I was playing with don’t work right now), everything seems to be working right now. The pain to come seems to involve trying to figure out basic policies for everything, like where files go, how to handle new contributors to our network, permissions, and all that administrative minutae.