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What is the small web? (2020)

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Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#71

Post by mro_name »

Nextgrid wrote: post #48
chubot wrote: post #37

I generally agree with this article, but ... Small Web applications and sites are single tenant. That means that one server hosts one application that serves just one person: you. I feel like people forgot that shared hosting exists (e.g. Dreamhost, or Nearly Free Speech). One computer can serve tons of websites! It can serve multiple Hacker News spikes at once. And the site doesn't even need to be in a virtual machi…

The biggest problem with shared hosting is security. It's common for everyone's processes to run as the same "www-data" user. It can be made secure, but it isn't common and most shared hosting is powered by off-the-shelf piles of shit like cPanel which are Swiss cheese when it comes to security.

I can't imagine that the process level is an issue here – we're not talking military, do we?

Other than that, prefer zero-knowledge designs and you can often reduce to the danger of vandalism. Have a friendly hoster and/or backups for that case.

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#73

Post by Nextgrid »

mro_name wrote: post #71
Nextgrid wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with shared hosting is security. It's common for everyone's processes to run as the same "www-data" user. It can be made secure, but it isn't common and most shared hosting is powered by off-the-shelf piles of shit like cPanel which are Swiss cheese when it comes to security.

I can't imagine that the process level is an issue here – we're not talking military, do we? Other than that, prefer zero-knowledge designs and you can often reduce to the danger of vandalism. Have a friendly hoster and/or backups for that case.

While not military, most websites handle some kind of personal data (even IP addresses count as such for GDPR purposes) and a large chunk of the world has regulations that impose penalties or at the very least requires disclosure (bad PR) for data breaches.

Considering how easy and relatively cheap it is to get your own dedicated bare-metal server, I don't see any reason to bother with shared hosting anymore.

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#74

Post by boondaburrah »

zozbot234 wrote: post #58
chubot wrote: post #37

I generally agree with this article, but ... Small Web applications and sites are single tenant. That means that one server hosts one application that serves just one person: you. I feel like people forgot that shared hosting exists (e.g. Dreamhost, or Nearly Free Speech). One computer can serve tons of websites! It can serve multiple Hacker News spikes at once. And the site doesn't even need to be in a virtual machi…

These days shared hosting with multiple tenants is more commonly known as "serverless". A bit of a misnomer since servers are involved, but it's the common term.

another thing I like is stuff like "lambda" where you can run a function instead of a whole server application for every api request! Wait, I think I've seen this before.

    functionname.cgi?param1=val&param2=val
(replace "cgi" with your favourite php/pl/py/cfm/whatever)

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#75

Post by int_19h »

boramalper wrote: post #63
chubot wrote: post #37

I generally agree with this article, but ... Small Web applications and sites are single tenant. That means that one server hosts one application that serves just one person: you. I feel like people forgot that shared hosting exists (e.g. Dreamhost, or Nearly Free Speech). One computer can serve tons of websites! It can serve multiple Hacker News spikes at once. And the site doesn't even need to be in a virtual machi…

Containerization solves 99% of those problems and more, such as not having to worry about conflicting dependencies, share of common resources, etc. I would say shared hosting is now more popular than ever, with a twist : similar to the shift that has happened from multi-user mainframes to personal computers to ubiquitous computing (ie individuals having multiple computers), self-hosters are also now hosting not one b…

> self-hosters are also now hosting not one but many websites/apps per server

When was this not the case? Self-hosters are generally more resource-constrained, and thus reusing hardware makes more sense. It was pretty common already 20 years ago.

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#76

Post by chrismorgan »

The *.small-web.com thing rubs me the wrong way, going entirely against the stated purpose: https://you.small-web.com is only a little better than https://mega.corp/you, because you still don’t own your home. You do probably have more control of what goes there, but you’re still far too liable to be cut off with no recourse. You don’t actually control it. Just wait until people start hosting malware on small-web.com and the domain gets blacklisted, or when some error in curbing abuse takes you down as well, or when people abusing any free service provided becomes too much of a trial for the maintainers and they shut the whole project down. That’s what normally happens to these things, more than with some, though certainly not all, larger things (e.g. I’d depend on github.io not being shut down far more than small-web.com).

Step one in the Small Web must be to have your own domain name. Then you can migrate between hosting providers, host it on a Raspberry Pi in your garage if your home ISP allows such things, or whatever.

(I’m glossing over the fact that even when it’s https://your.site, as they include in one other illustration in the article, with the adjacent caption “on the Small Web, you own your own home”, you don’t own your home, but lease it—though so long as you pick a sensible TLD, keep paying, and don’t do anything particularly illegal in whatever jurisdictions are relevant, you’re very unlikely to lose it.)

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#77

Post by MaxBarraclough »

lazyjeff wrote: post #18
desireco42 wrote: post #14

The thing about users was cringy, but otherwise I like this. I am not sure where to put it though, should I power up Raspberry Pi for this and let it run all the time or really use my desktop. Maybe something distributed would be good idea. Then you can use your phone to update it. But then you get into whole crypto thing way too much? I think this is useful thinking and exploration and if we suspend skepticism, it m…

I think the ideals are similar to indie web [ https://indieweb.org/ ], so maybe the author may want to join that community. Basically the indie web feels like a mature community-based approach to what the author is describing, minus the javascript library.

My thoughts exactly. The IndieWeb community has been around for some time.

This article has been discussed before, and people familiar with IndieWeb made the same point back then. [0] The author responded [1] but in my opinion it was weak sauce.

Also, IndieWeb is a much better label than small web.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24268472

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269830

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#78

Post by Nasrudith »

duxup wrote: post #16
skeyo wrote: post #4

I don't see how Site.js is any different than what he describes as "big web". So you create your own website and host it on a server. That's always been possible. What am I missing?

There’s a lot in that article that equates specific tech with ideology that I don’t think makes sense.

Look at the Great Leap Forward. Ideologues see everything which dares to disagree with them in even an aesthetic sense as ideological while the target wonders what the hell are they talking about. To be frank no matter how well educated they may be they are fundamentally complete idiots because of their insensitivity to reality.

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#79

Post by amoe_ »

Nextgrid wrote: post #48
chubot wrote: post #37

I generally agree with this article, but ... Small Web applications and sites are single tenant. That means that one server hosts one application that serves just one person: you. I feel like people forgot that shared hosting exists (e.g. Dreamhost, or Nearly Free Speech). One computer can serve tons of websites! It can serve multiple Hacker News spikes at once. And the site doesn't even need to be in a virtual machi…

The biggest problem with shared hosting is security. It's common for everyone's processes to run as the same "www-data" user. It can be made secure, but it isn't common and most shared hosting is powered by off-the-shelf piles of shit like cPanel which are Swiss cheese when it comes to security.

Years ago I worked at a small hosting company and avoiding this situation was definitely on our minds. There are a lot of approaches to it under eg. Apache: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/HTTPD/PrivilegeS...

My bet would be that most larger shared hosts have implemented some type of solution for this, but perhaps some smaller ones haven't.

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#80

Post by boramalper »

int_19h wrote: post #75
boramalper wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Containerization solves 99% of those problems and more, such as not having to worry about conflicting dependencies, share of common resources, etc. I would say shared hosting is now more popular than ever, with a twist : similar to the shift that has happened from multi-user mainframes to personal computers to ubiquitous computing (ie individuals having multiple computers), self-hosters are also now hosting not one b…

> self-hosters are also now hosting not one but many websites/apps per server When was this not the case? Self-hosters are generally more resource-constrained, and thus reusing hardware makes more sense. It was pretty common already 20 years ago.

My bad, I should have added "with ease" at the end of that sentence. It was not impossible of course, but I personally find easier now.
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