GitHub Pages and Cloudflare.
Simple, free and effective. The traffic between those two is not encrypted however for a static page this should not matter at all.
Ask HN: Best place to host a static website with SSL and CDN?
11–20 of 33 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best place to host a static website with SSL and CDN?
#12> 1. A custom domain with ssl, for an httpS url. This is pretty straightforward as long as you're setting up any VPS or have access to the server itself. If you wanted something like SquareSpace or Github Pages, this is much more difficult. > 2. A CDN, for super fast loading. I honestly have no idea what this means. A CDN can help if you have a large website over multiple data-centres, but really seems to be overshoo…
I rent from OVH it's like $3.99/mo or maybe $2.99/mo for a 10GB vps. Great speed too. They are one of thr largest server providers. You have full access too, so you do have to learn to setup virtual host / enable SSL, etc...
Also a domain can be as cheap as $0.99 for first year from GoDaddh but SSL is at least $9.00 from name cheap but you could get one of those let's encrypt Sal's but you have to update it every 90 days I hear.
Re: Ask HN: Best place to host a static website with SSL and CDN?
#13> 1. A custom domain with ssl, for an httpS url. This is pretty straightforward as long as you're setting up any VPS or have access to the server itself. If you wanted something like SquareSpace or Github Pages, this is much more difficult. > 2. A CDN, for super fast loading. I honestly have no idea what this means. A CDN can help if you have a large website over multiple data-centres, but really seems to be overshoo…
Thanks for the detailed answer! Here are some comments to answer your questions:
> 2. A CDN, for super fast loading.
I just want my website to load fast from anywhere in the world. I especially want this since page load time impact SEO. Something like cloudflare.com which has a free plan.
> 5. And not expensive, less than $10 per month.
$10 per month excluding the domain name. I don't think that's unresonable for a simple static html website. As mentioned above there are some CDN that have a free tier.
Overall I'm trying to find the simplest way to host my static website online, and make sure it works well with search engine (ssl and fast to load). All of that for less than $10 per month.
Re: Ask HN: Best place to host a static website with SSL and CDN?
#14> 4. Something simple to use, because I don't want to lose time learning/configuring stuff. So the Amazon combo S3+route53+cloudfront won't be possible for me. "learning/configuring stuff" isn't time lost. It's the price you pay to get a lot of functionality for a minimal financial cost. None of these items are complex, costly, time-consuming, or poorly documented. You're worried about at most a dozen hours of time o…
Setting up a server has a sufficient learning curve to significantly delay a project launch for someone who's new to the task.
Configuring such a server to be performant and secure, and keeping the kernel and all relevant packages patched is another learning curve. It's also a major time-sink for a small or one-person team, and even more impactful if this is a side project.
A full server is also totally unnecessary if all you're serving is a static site.
Is all that stuff worth learning? Probably. If you're a technologist. If you're interested in web development rather than trying to advertise your mobile apps. Or if your time has no value.
But if you're just trying to get a static site hosted as quickly and inexpensively as possible, a $5/mo cPanel shared hosting account plus something like Cloudflare may be a MUCH better use of your time and resources.
Re: Ask HN: Best place to host a static website with SSL and CDN?
#15GitHub Pages and Cloudflare.
GitHub Pages already have a CDN, so why add cloudflare?
And as mentioned in my post, Github doesn't let you have some kind of htaccess, so no 301 redirect are possible. And I need that feature.
Re: Ask HN: Best place to host a static website with SSL and CDN?
#16> 4. Something simple to use, because I don't want to lose time learning/configuring stuff. So the Amazon combo S3+route53+cloudfront won't be possible for me. "learning/configuring stuff" isn't time lost. It's the price you pay to get a lot of functionality for a minimal financial cost. None of these items are complex, costly, time-consuming, or poorly documented. You're worried about at most a dozen hours of time o…
Setting up a server has a sufficient learning curve to significantly delay a project launch for someone who's new to the task. Configuring such a server to be performant and secure, and keeping the kernel and all relevant packages patched is another learning curve. It's also a major time-sink for a small or one-person team, and even more impactful if this is a side project. A full server is also totally unnecessary i…
You're right! For sophisticated needs like running a server, it's not reasonable to expect a random nontechnical person to take on all that education.
This person clearly knows enough to be aware that they have good options for hosting a static site without ever having to admin a server. Frankly the simple S3+CloudFront+Route53 setup can be done in an hour or less following lots of clearly written documents that don't require one to be a seasoned sysadmin. And it'll cost less than $2/mo.
Re: Ask HN: Best place to host a static website with SSL and CDN?
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Setting up a server has a sufficient learning curve to significantly delay a project launch for someone who's new to the task. Configuring such a server to be performant and secure, and keeping the kernel and all relevant packages patched is another learning curve. It's also a major time-sink for a small or one-person team, and even more impactful if this is a side project. A full server is also totally unnecessary i…
You're right! For sophisticated needs like running a server, it's not reasonable to expect a random nontechnical person to take on all that education. This person clearly knows enough to be aware that they have good options for hosting a static site without ever having to admin a server. Frankly the simple S3+CloudFront+Route53 setup can be done in an hour or less following lots of clearly written documents that don'…
You're right. Though frankly, the S3 and cloudfront docs are terrible - especially if you're not already highly familiar with the services and Amazons offerings in general, but even if you are. They don't give nearly enough context or definitions of terms.
I haven't been particularly impressed by any blog posts on the topic either. What resources specifically would you recommend to someone new to the stack?
Re: Ask HN: Best place to host a static website with SSL and CDN?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right! For sophisticated needs like running a server, it's not reasonable to expect a random nontechnical person to take on all that education. This person clearly knows enough to be aware that they have good options for hosting a static site without ever having to admin a server. Frankly the simple S3+CloudFront+Route53 setup can be done in an hour or less following lots of clearly written documents that don'…
You're right. Though frankly, the S3 and cloudfront docs are terrible - especially if you're not already highly familiar with the services and Amazons offerings in general, but even if you are. They don't give nearly enough context or definitions of terms. I haven't been particularly impressed by any blog posts on the topic either. What resources specifically would you recommend to someone new to the stack?
AWS has a pretty good doc for this specific case, actually - http://docs.aws.amazon.com/gettingstarted/latest/swh/website...
But this is decent too - https://www.lambrospetrou.com/articles/migrate-to-aws-static...
Re: Ask HN: Best place to host a static website with SSL and CDN?
#19A small static site on S3 with the free cloudflare plan in front will cost you ~$0.50 per month, with moderate traffic. Probably less than fifty cents, especially to start with, if your traffic is low.
They support all the requested features.
Yes, hosting this on S3, with either cloudfront or cloudflare, does take some (one time) setup.
The payoff is that you don't have to rent and deal with a server and ongoing costs are very very low.
Re: Ask HN: Best place to host a static website with SSL and CDN?
#20GitHub Pages and Cloudflare.
GitHub Pages already have a CDN, so why add cloudflare? And as mentioned in my post, Github doesn't let you have some kind of htaccess, so no 301 redirect are possible. And I need that feature.
Cloudflare allows you to perform redirects.
https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200172286-H...