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Ask HN: What free or low-cost static site hosting do you use most?

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Re: Ask HN: What free or low-cost static site hosting do you use most?

#91

Post by bkgunby »

colinbartlett wrote: post #82
bkgunby wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that SSL only works between the browser and Cloudfront servers. Last time I checked there wasn't an option to use SSL with s3. It's not a deal breaker, but it was enough to make me look for alternatives.

If I understand what you're saying, if the origin for your Cloudfront distribution is an S3 bucket, the link between S3 and Cloudfront is unencrypted? That seems unimaginable to me.

Yup. It's fine for most simple sites that don't receive much traffic due to almost nonexistent costs. But I personally don't recommend it when there are many alternatives out there these days. Partly SSL is no SSL imo.

Re: Ask HN: What free or low-cost static site hosting do you use most?

#92

Post by exodust »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #56

Just to echo... Amazon S3 with CloudFront. No contest. CloudFront has free SSL too. Then AWS Lambda to provide dynamic content via Javascript / API if needed. If you want to get fancy you can even attach it to your domain root (example.com vs www.example.com) using Route53. Which is impossible with many static hosts. Although that requires a hosted Route53 zone which at $2 might very well be 100x your hosting costs.…

If I may ask a simple question which reveals my ignorance about AWS and anything too technical, but what is the actual CMS being used for a website hosted on Amazon? Take a simple website with text and images that you want to update via an easy to use CMS, what is the AWS service that is the CMS seen by a user looking after the website? Does one exist or is it a matter of needing to make such a CMS?

Edit: thanks for the replies. I had a feeling AWS was more a "parts" bin rather than anything approaching a ready-to-go hosting + CMS, but thought I'd check.

Re: Ask HN: What free or low-cost static site hosting do you use most?

#93

Post by nightcracker »

nitrogen wrote: post #88
colinbartlett wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand what you're saying, if the origin for your Cloudfront distribution is an S3 bucket, the link between S3 and Cloudfront is unencrypted? That seems unimaginable to me.

If the origin is an S3 static website, the link is unencrypted but should run over Amazon's own network. Since Amazon has your S3 and CloudFront data anyway, assuming all CF endpoints are under Amazon's control, you don't lose much by having the S3 origin load over http.

That's just naive with the information we have today. Google thought this too, and the NSA happily used that to eavesdrop.

Re: Ask HN: What free or low-cost static site hosting do you use most?

#95

Post by zatkin »

oliver2213 wrote: post #94

I use a cheap $5/mo Digital Ocean droplet with nginx, Nikola [0], and letsencrypt for ssl. Works great and I can expand easily if I want to add php or other wsgi apps. [0] https://getnikola.com

I did this for a while and ended up expanding out to setting up my own email server, calendar server, and contact server. Needless to say, I'm a happy customer. :-)

Re: Ask HN: What free or low-cost static site hosting do you use most?

#96

Post by throwaway2016a »

exodust wrote: post #92
throwaway2016a wrote: post #56

Just to echo... Amazon S3 with CloudFront. No contest. CloudFront has free SSL too. Then AWS Lambda to provide dynamic content via Javascript / API if needed. If you want to get fancy you can even attach it to your domain root (example.com vs www.example.com) using Route53. Which is impossible with many static hosts. Although that requires a hosted Route53 zone which at $2 might very well be 100x your hosting costs.…

If I may ask a simple question which reveals my ignorance about AWS and anything too technical, but what is the actual CMS being used for a website hosted on Amazon? Take a simple website with text and images that you want to update via an easy to use CMS, what is the AWS service that is the CMS seen by a user looking after the website? Does one exist or is it a matter of needing to make such a CMS? Edit: thanks for…

The parent question was about static site hosting so one would likely use a static site generator like Jekyll.

If you want a CMS you need to either install it on a server (via Amazon EC2) or use a serverless product like AWS Lambda (which lets you run functions on demand.

But with a static site generator you will usually run and test your site locally before it generates static .html files and pushes to S3. But S3 just hosts static content. The only thing it can do that approaches anything dynamic are redirects. You can also lock down permissions by role but you wouldn't want to do that for a public static site.

Re: Ask HN: What free or low-cost static site hosting do you use most?

#97

Post by rainboiboi »

larrydag wrote: post #66
nodejs-news wrote: post #45

I'm a great self-hosting fan, behind my DSL connection using 2 x RaspberryPI. I have 3 static web sites, 2 with Jekyll, 1 with Hugo, with great perf : checkout webpagetest -> https://www.webpagetest.org/result/161123_0R_8RDY/ and feel free to check my 3 web sites: - http://www.it-wars.com - http://www.louer-hendaye.com - http://www.nodejs-news.com Init : 2 RaspberryPi + electric plugs : 2x 30$ + 2 x6$ Monthly bill: e…

Can you explain your setup and how you did your self hosted sites?

Simply install any linux distro of your choice (mine is Ubuntu) and fire up apache/nginx to load in your HTML. Then port-forward 80 to your raspberry pi IP address and you are done. If you are on dynamic IP (which most of the residential broadband does), set up dynamic DNS and add a CNAME record in your DNS to point your custom domain to your dynamic domain - this way visitors will be able to access your site even after your IP changes.

Re: Ask HN: What free or low-cost static site hosting do you use most?

#98

Post by StavrosK »

eximius wrote: post #72

NearlyFreeSpeech - fantastic business, incredibly cheap. My domain costs are more than my hosting costs (I pay roughly $2.50 a month for hosting a forum).

I'm on NearlyFreeSpeech now for a small MediaWiki installation I didn't want to have on my other server, but it's terribly expensive. They charge me $6/mo for a small installation when I can get a whole droplet in DO for that kind of money.

Re: Ask HN: What free or low-cost static site hosting do you use most?

#99

Post by DocG »

exodust wrote: post #92
throwaway2016a wrote: post #56

Just to echo... Amazon S3 with CloudFront. No contest. CloudFront has free SSL too. Then AWS Lambda to provide dynamic content via Javascript / API if needed. If you want to get fancy you can even attach it to your domain root (example.com vs www.example.com) using Route53. Which is impossible with many static hosts. Although that requires a hosted Route53 zone which at $2 might very well be 100x your hosting costs.…

If I may ask a simple question which reveals my ignorance about AWS and anything too technical, but what is the actual CMS being used for a website hosted on Amazon? Take a simple website with text and images that you want to update via an easy to use CMS, what is the AWS service that is the CMS seen by a user looking after the website? Does one exist or is it a matter of needing to make such a CMS? Edit: thanks for…

Amazon offers basically hardware. You rent a piece of server resourses. What operating system, what CMS you use is up to you, but prepeared to install and configure everything.

But, they also offer plenty of free (and good) "ready made and pre configured" packages for people to use (for exampe wordpress, bitbucket etc.). You can search them here https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/

Re: Ask HN: What free or low-cost static site hosting do you use most?

#100

Post by dgemm »

exodust wrote: post #92
throwaway2016a wrote: post #56

Just to echo... Amazon S3 with CloudFront. No contest. CloudFront has free SSL too. Then AWS Lambda to provide dynamic content via Javascript / API if needed. If you want to get fancy you can even attach it to your domain root (example.com vs www.example.com) using Route53. Which is impossible with many static hosts. Although that requires a hosted Route53 zone which at $2 might very well be 100x your hosting costs.…

If I may ask a simple question which reveals my ignorance about AWS and anything too technical, but what is the actual CMS being used for a website hosted on Amazon? Take a simple website with text and images that you want to update via an easy to use CMS, what is the AWS service that is the CMS seen by a user looking after the website? Does one exist or is it a matter of needing to make such a CMS? Edit: thanks for…

There is no single answer - AWS isn't a single hosting service, but instead more of a "parts bin" that you can use to build simple or complex services.

I don't think it's what you're looking for in this case.

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