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Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?

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Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?

#341

Post by throwawaysea »

zck wrote: post #28

I 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…

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?

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?

#342

Post by indigodaddy »

messo wrote: post #219

Hosting a personal blog on old / cheap hardware at home and accepting some downtime now and then should be a trade-of worth making for most. An interconnected web of documents served from personal computers residing under a desk or in a basement – it is a beautiful thing. We nerds often seem to fall into the trap of over-engineering things, like, spending a lot of time building personal stuff that can scale into the…

Definitely cool, but personally, I’d rather not open any inbound holes into my home network, no matter how secure I may think it is.

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?

#343

Post by busymom0 »

yarcob wrote: post #339
livinginfear wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a difference between "freely expressing your ideas" and eg. plotting a vigilante kidnapping. The former should be protected, the latter should be reported to the police. A lot of the people who say they want free speech actually have some kind of anarchist fantasy where they can do whatever they want without consequences. It seems like you care about free speech, not anarchism, so I'm not sure why the blog po…

Why are we letting tech companies become self appointed judge and jury, often forced to do so by online mobs? There's a full legal system to take care of those who actually incite violence/plot kidnapping etc. Nobody is talking about defending them.

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?

#344

Post by throwawaysea »

sedachv wrote: post #291
jacobp100 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually just went the other way. I found CF is a bit too aggressive with anti-DDOS measures, and the page would not work sometimes in Safari with default settings. The default setup for GH Pages is not great. Jekyll is very dated. But if you use GH Actions, you can build yourself a pretty great setup. My site is open source at https://github.com/jacobp100/jacob-does-code - there's also a blog post about how the bu…

> I found CF is a bit too aggressive with anti-DDOS measures As someone who does a lot of browsing with unpopular web browsers, Cloudflare is basically a way to ensure that it is a coin toss as to whether or not I will see your site; it is not the worst CDN/DoS protection racket service out there though. I would like to see how much legitimate traffic Cloudflare or the others block, and how much website operators are…

Is there a good alternative, particularly one that does not impose their own moderation/censorship regime? After Cloudflare decided to abandon content neutrality (https://reclaimthenet.org/cloudflare-suspends-8chan/) I really don’t want anything to do with them.

Or are there reasonable software or hardware options to protect one’s own servers directly without relying on a third party service?

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?

#345

Post by busymom0 »

deepspace wrote: post #336
livinginfear wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 about my home country - they get labelled racist/xenophobic etc when they are speaking the truth.

If I made a website criticizing the corruption or filth or disregard for women or gay rights in my home country, NFS would take down my site - probably until I dox myself and show that it's a brown person running it - then it might become okay.

Political correctness such as this is exactly why the good people in my home country suffer the most. All so that someone in western world or the elite class in my home country can feel morally superior.

And I hate to bring my skin color in a debate but that's the only way to explain how political correctness is making things worse for good people back home.

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?

#346

Post by busymom0 »

throwawaysea wrote: post #341
zck wrote: post #28

I 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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?

#347

Post by _v7gu »

busymom0 wrote: post #340
livinginfear wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That blog post was why I decided to not use them too. Specifically their line about > "and we have no interest in living in a sea of mayonnaise." What is that even supposed to mean?? Who refers to people as "mayonnaise"?? While claiming to be against racism??

>Who refers to people as "mayonnaise"??

Racist people I'd guess

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?

#348

Post by hedora »

giantg2 wrote: post #256

Anybody using S3 static hosting? How does that compare to some of these others, specifically on price?

I am, with cloudfront. It’s basically free (less than a domain name, for sure) for small sites. There’s some concern about paying a lot if someone ddos’s the page, since cloudfront is a few pennies per GB transferred to the internet.

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?

#349

Post by johnx123-up »

zck wrote: post #28

I 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 do things like serve html without the .html filetype in the url; e.g. https://zck.org/emacsconf2020 is stored on the server as emacsconf2020.html

How do you handle it?

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?

#350

Post by villgax »

brandly wrote: post #330
villgax wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get your facts straight, they have had custom domains for a looong time & there was absolutely no need for Jekyll either at any point to host a page, it just happened to be one the most documented/blogged about way to use GitHub pages with automatic builds instead of having static content.

Free SSL for custom domains happened a few years ago: https://github.blog/2018-05-01-github-pages-custom-domains-h...

That's almost 3 years ago, thread OP said an year or so
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