DizyDiz.com has been a personal website since 2011. Over the years it has taken many forms -- a Joomla tech blog with articles about building a 48TB FreeNAS box, a second Joomla site whose entire output was "I'm Back!?? No. Not yet." and "Meow", a WordPress placeholder with stock theme content about architectural firms, and occasionally just a 502 error page.
The original 2011 site was the real thing. It had a blog, a forum (Kunena), a resume page, a gaming section, and even a flying section with Cherokee 140 airplane pictures. The tagline was "You are the Imitators; I am the Originator." Social media links pointed to @dizydiz on Twitter, Picasa, and YouTube. It ran on the Mynxx template by RocketTheme, which was peak dark-themed Joomla.
The articles were genuine homelab content: how to set up LSI MegaRAID cards in FreeNAS, how to recover a ZFS pool, how to build a custom workstation, and a detailed rant about Comcast's 250GB data cap that involved buffet analogies and actual math.
Then sometime between 2011 and 2017, the original content was wiped and replaced with a fresh Joomla install running the Protostar template. Two articles were published on March 8, 2017. Both were essentially "I'm coming back!" announcements. The site then sat with those two posts for over seven years, accumulating 1,376 hits each.
In late 2024, it was migrated to WordPress with the Twenty Twenty-Four theme. The site displayed stock content about "Etudes Architectural Solutions" -- placeholder text that was never replaced with real content. Then the WordPress install broke and started returning 502 errors.
Now, in 2026, DizyDiz is back for real. Rebuilt as a static site running in a Docker container on a Dell R610 server. The old content has been recovered from the Wayback Machine. The homelab has grown from a single Norco chassis to a rack of Dell PowerEdge servers running Docker, Portainer, AI inference on 6 GPUs, and more. The site is faster, simpler, and self-hosted from top to bottom.
Timeline
DizyDiz.com is registered. The copyright footer on the first known version reads "Copyright 2009."
The domain existed before the first archived content.
The golden era. A full Joomla 1.5 site with tech blog articles, a forum, resume, games section, and flying section with Cherokee 140 airplane photos. Articles covered FreeNAS, ZFS, LSI MegaRAID, custom workstations, and Comcast data caps.
Joomla 1.5 / Mynxx template by RocketTheme / Kunena forum / VirtueMart e-commerce (!) / Social: @dizydiz on Twitter, Picasa, YouTube
The quiet years. The original content disappears. The domain continues to resolve but the site's status during this period is uncertain.
No Wayback Machine snapshots survive from this period.
A fresh Joomla install appears with the Protostar template. Two articles are published on March 8: "Welcome Back" ("I'm Back!?? No. Not yet.") and "Meow" ("Meow."). Both include spam blocker links for MXGuardDog.
Last Wayback snapshot: March 25, 2018 -- both articles at 1,376 hits each.
Migrated to WordPress with the Twenty Twenty-Four theme. The site displays stock "Etudes Architectural Solutions" content that was never customized.
WordPress era. Still vibing. Still minimal. Also running robots noindex.
The WordPress installation breaks. 502 errors. Silence.
The most honest era of the site.
Rebuilt from scratch as a static site. Content recovered from the Wayback Machine going back to 2011. Deployed as an nginx Docker container on Dell PowerEdge R610 hardware. No CMS, no database, no PHP.
The homelab that started with a Norco 24-bay chassis now runs 2 Dell PowerEdge servers, 6 GPUs, and local AI.
Tech Stack
Frontend
Pure HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript. No frameworks, no build tools, no node_modules. Dark/light theme toggle, CSS animations, and smooth scrolling -- all without a single npm install.
Hosting
nginx:alpine Docker container with a macvlan network address, running on a Dell R610 server. Managed through Portainer. No cloud, no CDN, no managed hosting.
Infrastructure
Self-hosted home lab with Dell PowerEdge R610 and R710 servers, QNAP NAS, multiple Docker containers, and a 6-GPU AI inference node. Everything managed through SSH, Portainer, and N8N automation.
The CMS Journey
Joomla 1.5 (2011)
The original. Mynxx template, Kunena forum, VirtueMart, the works. Real content, real articles, real homelab energy. This was peak DizyDiz.
Joomla 3.x (2017)
Protostar template. Two articles: "Welcome Back" and "Meow." MXGuardDog spam blockers. A login form in the sidebar. Seven years of silent accumulation.
WordPress (2024)
Twenty Twenty-Four theme with stock "Etudes Architectural Solutions" content. Never customized. Added robots noindex. Then broke with 502 errors.
Static HTML (2026)
No CMS. No database. No PHP. Just files served by nginx. The fastest and most reliable version of DizyDiz that has ever existed.