What benefit does this have over Netlify?
You can put AWS Engineer on your resume.
Gives you substance to attend AWS Global summits.
Show HN: Scar – Static websites with HTTPS, a global CDN, and custom domains
151–160 of 171 posts
Re: Show HN: Scar – Static websites with HTTPS, a global CDN, and custom domains
#152Re: Show HN: Scar – Static websites with HTTPS, a global CDN, and custom domains
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry about the ignorance but how do you run it from your garage? What about bandwidth? Could you share the url? Also would you recommend me any guide to get started?
The usual roadblock in this process is getting ports exposed to the internet. In the best case this can just be done on your router configuration. In the unfortunately common case the ISP blocks you from doing this and the only solution is to change ISP.
I've heard of ISPs blocking ports, but not in Europe. I just forward ports 80 and 443 to the server (and pinhole the IPv6 ports) and it's done.
The upstream bandwidth is about 60Mb/s, which is fine for almost everything.
Re: Show HN: Scar – Static websites with HTTPS, a global CDN, and custom domains
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN won't take a static website on a $5 VM down if it's set up even remotely correctly. Traffic to a popular link on HN is likely to get on the order of ~100rps max (more likely 1-10rps). Nginx will handle that with no problem. CDNs may make a site a bit faster, but for a static site it's unlikely to make much difference if you're on a good host in US/EU or central Asia. If you're hosting in Australia or Japan, maybe…
When I tested my $5 nginx vps could handle 16,000 requests per second over local host. Maybe at worst 10,000 per second over the network
Yep this doesn't surprise me at all. A stock install of nginx with no tuning at all was reaching 26k rps on my 2013 MacBook Pro when I tested it years ago.
Re: Show HN: Scar – Static websites with HTTPS, a global CDN, and custom domains
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, you certainly can, which is part of their the beauty. Last I looked, though, you couldn't deploy to S3 without using tools that work specifically with it. I guess it's really not that big a deal, but I prefer the genericness of "I'm configuring a webserver and pushing my files to it." That process can be just about fully automated, even including HTTPS setup if you want that, and then you can use with whatever s…
Depends on the tools! If you're manually copying files, there are clients (e.g. Transmit, which is what I use) that just treat it like any (S)FTP server. If you're using the command line, yeah, you need to use Amazon's CLI, although it's still basically a one-liner to sync the directory you want to publish.
Ah, yes, that does make sense. Thanks for explaining.
I'm a fairly aggressive automator, so I forget that doing it by hand is actually an option.
Re: Show HN: Scar – Static websites with HTTPS, a global CDN, and custom domains
#156Am I the only one who still hosts my own static sites on a plain old virtual machine? It's pretty simple to configure nginx for static sites, and by doing it yourself you reduce vendor lockin to just about nil. Even if S3 is massively cheaper, $5/month for a tiny VM seems like a small price to pay for being vendor-abstract. I suppose S3 is way less likely to suffer a meaningful outage than my little VM, but how many…
Maintenance is my primary concern. I deal with software for a living. I want my blog to just work without me having to worry about maintaining the VM. Netlify makes this dead simple. I used to host Wordpress sites for myself and family members. I've now moved nearly all of those sites to Netlify (for hosting) and Forestry (for editing/CMS). I no longer have to worry about malicious hacking attempts, Wordpress updates…
You make a good point clearly. Thanks for taking the time to do it.
I guess I feel like the maintenance cost is worth the knowledge I gain from automating my own infrastructure, but I realize not everyone is interested in devops. I'll also note it costs me very little time - I don't remember the last time I had to do anything actively with it.
Elsewhere in the thread I mentioned vendor lockin, which does concern me. I also worry about vendor monoculture - if everyone just uses AWS, they gain undue influence over the market, so in some ways I guess my stubborn self-hosting is a small gesture against that.
I see a lot of people complain about how the internet has become a drab, uniform machine that treats people as eyeballs or wallets to be sacrificed to Moloch [1], little like the wild, free-spirited collection of small sites it was back in the late 90s.
I think a lot of that is the price paid for centralization and funding, so again, self-hosting is a small way to fight back just a bit against that.
1: Moloch in this sense: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
Re: Show HN: Scar – Static websites with HTTPS, a global CDN, and custom domains
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah. I was not aware of Forestry until I came across your post as well. Now I’m not sure which one I should go with.
I use Netlify and can vouch for its simplicity. I have a few sites on it, some are deployed via bitbucket and some are simply drag-and-drop. I never used Forestry but by the looks of it, it looks more of an actual CMS and far too sophisticated than Netlify. Being said that it looks over engineered to me for hosting static websites. But if I wanted a CMS to host my client websites whom I have to hand over control, I w…
Thanks this is helpful!
Re: Show HN: Scar – Static websites with HTTPS, a global CDN, and custom domains
#158This is highly complex for no reason.
GitHubPages, Netify provide you with easy to use custom static page hosting.
Your abstraction is nice, but the learning curve for someone is incredibly high for such a setup.
Re: Show HN: Scar – Static websites with HTTPS, a global CDN, and custom domains
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
apt-get install nginx goaccess cd website cp * /var/www/html Yearly maintenance required: apt-get update, apt-get upgrade View traffic stats: goaccess -f /var/log/nginx/access.log I'd say its just as easy and seamless to do it yourself on a cheap VPS for a static website. HTTPS isn't that much extra work either.
> Yearly maintenance I'd say continuous maintenance with response to specific issues. Also debian updates don't restart services which rely on updated shared libraries, which means you need to restart your nginx after openssl updates. Also restarts when kernel is updated. Also... There's really more to it than just an annual upgrade. You're likely not going to be affected if you ignore this, but why risk it?
Ok, I forgot to add 'reboot' to yearly maintenance :). And change the ssh port or consider a private key. But if its just for a personal static website, I wouldn't get overly concerned about being hacked. Assuming you have backed up your page, its another handful of simple commands to rebuild the whole thing anyway. They are also quite fun for other uses, like setting up a squid proxy, messing with an email server or irc server, just having a personal mini-cloud you can easily access from anywhere.
Re: Show HN: Scar – Static websites with HTTPS, a global CDN, and custom domains
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to nitpick, but copyright declarations are a thing of the past in many nations with copyright protections automatically conveyed upon creation, registration only necessary within a short time after infringement was detected, with registration serving to only maximize the monetary sanction the government will levy on your behalf. and regarding license, they have the MIT license added to the repository
That's fine, but this is purporting to be a copyright declaration. I know they're unnecessary, but if you are got to add one, you should do it properly.
It is inconsequential