I have looked into this, I found that [vuepress] https://vuepress.vuejs.org/ compiles into quite good looking static sites.
As to the hosting I am using Google Firebase Hosting for a small static site which is free for the moment.
I am in the process of setting up local hosting on my home fibre.
Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
361–370 of 507 posts
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#362I use https://nearlyfreespeech.net for my static site. It isn't free -- it is pretty cheap -- but it has a lot going for it. It requires no custom tooling -- I upload via rsync. This makes it trivial to migrate to a new provider if necessary. I develop my site locally, then rsync it up. I have a custom domain pointed at the site, and also a custom .htaccess, so I have a good amount of control over the site. I do thin…
I have used nfshost for hosting multiple sites for over a decade. They're a fantastic service that's simple, secure, and provides great, fast support. They recently published this blog post: https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2021/01/19/free-speech-in-... After reading this, I made the decision to move my hosting elsewhere. I have never hosted content that is even remotely political, and have no intention to do so. I…
Well it did say 'nearly' in the name!
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also used/loved NFSN, but I have a habit of neglecting pages for years. I have had more than one site go dark for months before I realized they’d run out of budget. Now I use GH pages so I don’t have to think about it. If you’re actively updating (or just better organized), NFSN is a good choice
I came to post the same. NFS does have some email alerts, but if you leave something on NFS and then forget to add funds you may lose it. That happened to me, and I decided never to use them again, because at the end of the day I’d much rather have infrastructure bill me and stay online than require pre-payment and die when the funds run out. But if you’re sure you’ll never forget to top off your account balance, NFS…
I’m pretty bad at keeping on top of that sort of thing, and their email alerts have kept me on top of it for close to 20 years now. I set email alerts at $5 and at $1 remaining and I almost always ignore the $5 one. I think I’ve gotten the dreaded “your account is out of funds” emails three or four times in that time, and I can have it back to running with a few clicks. I’m pretty darn lazy but I think their system is wonderful. No out-of-sight auto-pay that creeps up in cost, but still relatively easy to manage.
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for pointing out this blog post. I used NFS for many years but moved away a while ago for opportunistic reasons. However, after reading that post, I will make every effort to go back to them. "Freedom of speech" does not include hate speech or racist speech or any speech advocating against a group of people in my worldview, and I therefore agree 100% with NFS's stance. All freedoms have limits, agreed to by…
Politically incorrect things get labelled "racist" now a days. I, as a brown immigrant, get to criticize my home country all I want. I can call my home country corrupt, filthy, polluted, no regards for women rights, gay rights, caste system, rapes etc and be totally okay as long as the other person knows I am brown. But suddenly if a white person or someone with the wrong "political affilitation" says the same things…
> Political correctness such as this is exactly why the good people in my home country suffer the most.
I think it might be income inequality that makes the good people in your home country suffer the most - but I don't want to assert this because I'm (probably) not from your home country and don't know it quite like you do.
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#365AWS S3 + Cloudfront. The initial setup can be a little finicky, but once you do get it setup, the rest of the time you only do an S3 sync from your local dir to the S3 bucket. It will also be stupid fast (cloudfront is edge networks) + have ssl + it will not go down if you ever see a surge in traffic. I have several of these and they work beautifully. As far as cost goes: 12$/domain per year + 0.5$/month for route53…
I put my site on s3, gatsby deployed from GitHub actions automatically after merge with master, and put Cloudflare in front of it. Remember reading that Cloudflare might throttle the free plan sometime but never noticed! And it’s free so can’t complain!
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#366I've tried Github pages, Netlify, and Cloudflare Pages. Moved last night to the latter. Github pages is fine, but the extra gh-pages branch is kind of annoying. It's fairly clear (for obvious reasons) that they mainly think about Jekyll users, though I had a Hugo blog there for a while. Netlify sounds great, but in practice I ran into an annoying issue that I couldn't resolve where I had to rerun every automatic buil…
Basically everything you wrote about GitHub Pages is wrong. GitHub Pages is static hosting. If you don’t need Jekyll, don’t use it. There’s nothing special about it. GitHub Pages does NOT charge for custom domains. You can configure any branch for GitHub Pages, or even just the /docs folder on the main branch.
I think we've both said correct things, but I think you've missed my meaning: yes, I understand that Github Pages is static hosting, I was point out that by default the build system uses Jekyll. This is nonobvious.
This is in the docs: "GitHub Pages will use Jekyll to build your site by default. If you want to use a static site generator other than Jekyll, disable the Jekyll build process by creating an empty file called .nojekyll in the root of your publishing source, then follow your static site generator's instructions to build your site locally." (https://docs.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-pages/...). Netlify and CF will both run some other static site generators (e.g. Hugo in my case) for you, while Github Pages will run Jekyll (or you can build locally).
And yes, custom domains are free for public repos. I made a mistake reading the page about custom domains, which mentioned that private repos need a Github Pro account. You're also right about configuring any branch.
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#367Github pages, handsdown.
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#368I use https://nearlyfreespeech.net for my static site. It isn't free -- it is pretty cheap -- but it has a lot going for it. It requires no custom tooling -- I upload via rsync. This makes it trivial to migrate to a new provider if necessary. I develop my site locally, then rsync it up. I have a custom domain pointed at the site, and also a custom .htaccess, so I have a good amount of control over the site. I do thin…
I have used nfshost for hosting multiple sites for over a decade. They're a fantastic service that's simple, secure, and provides great, fast support. They recently published this blog post: https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2021/01/19/free-speech-in-... After reading this, I made the decision to move my hosting elsewhere. I have never hosted content that is even remotely political, and have no intention to do so. I…
Funnily enough, arbiters of hate speech are usually quite racist against other minorities but are able to find very nice excuses for themselves and their circle.
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does this service live up to their name? Are they for free speech principles or do they have their own content moderation policies that go above the legal minimums?
You be the judge based on this blog post: https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2021/01/19/free-speech-in-... Imo, answer is no. Any site which uses terms like "sea of mayonnaise" to describe people while claiming to be against racism is giving lip service and lacks self awareness.
Wow that is a really disappointing blog post, both for showing they aren’t content neutral and because of its unprofessional tone. Thanks, there have to be better options out there.
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#370For static sites, GitHub pages is extremely easy, if you're already using GitHub to host the code. You follow a few lines of code to stick a deploy script into your repository, point your domain, and you're done.