One of the features I don't think Fastmail advertise at all is that you can host static websites from your user storage - with HTTPS etc. You can use one of their subdomains or your own domain, it can do photo galleries I think as well as redirects.
Static site hosting hurdles
151–160 of 183 posts
Re: Static site hosting hurdles
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what's wrong with shared hosting? You answered that yourself: > It costs less than $10/month That’s a lot of dollars for a static website. There are a myriad of free options and there have been for years. Kinda disappointing that they weren’t mentioned. Anyone wanting to deploy a static website knows the big 4, completely free: Netlify, Vercel, CloudFlare Pages, GitHub Pages.
There are still some limits to these (for example Netlify limits the bandwidth you can use each month), but yeah, for most practical purposes the free tier should do just fine. On a side note, I'm wondering if one can host one site simultaneously on e. g. Netlify and Vercel and load-balance those (for example, with round-robin DNS) to stay within free limits for longer.
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Re: Static site hosting hurdles
#153Static hosting on VPS cite is easy as hell. Get a VPS with Ubuntu 22.04 for as low as 3 Euros/Month, execute the following commands: ``` sudo apt-get install -y nginx python3-certbot-nginx certbot sudo ufw allow "Nginx Full" sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default sudo mkdir -p /srv/https/website sudo chown -vR $MYUSER:$MYUSER /srv/https/website echo "I've created my website here." > /srv/https/website/index.htm…
This is great but what the article is about that you're underestimating is the decision anxiety and subsequent complexity of arriving at the specific configuration you've posted. Even after you've for some reason decided on which tech to use (nginx, etc.), it doesn't set itself up (well it does but not in as easy-to-use config as yours). Examples of how to configure it well are going to vary depending on where you re…
> This is great but what the article is about that you're underestimating is the decision anxiety and subsequent complexity of arriving at the specific configuration you've posted.
The same can be said about finding your static site generator, your favorite social media, the color of your car, your home deco, the race of your next dog...
If you want a life where people do the choices for you and stuff edibles into your mouth, there is one easy solution: a nursing home.
Re: Static site hosting hurdles
#154Yeah I went with Netlify for my static site because I have zero desire to ever been an IT admin. I do skip the static generator part and go with artisinally hand crafted HTML/CSS/JS instead. It’s radically simpler and ultimately better imho.
How do you get your content into Netlify? They push the CI/CD angle pretty hard (sometimes to the exclusion of other things; e.g. bugs in the CLI that break things if you aren't on their expected/happy path) and the fetishization of GitHub-integrated CI/CD leads to stuff that is about as complex as the traditional undesirable IT overhead.
If that's a concern, you can choose to deploy your site from a .zip file uploaded straight to Netlify
Re: Static site hosting hurdles
#155Uh what's wrong with shared hosting? I use Dreamhost but there are dozens of others. It costs less than $10/month and I've used it since 2009. I think the industry (or part of a generation of programmers) somehow collectively forgot that it exists. I don't see any mention of it in the article -- it solves the problem exactly. It easily serves and survives all the spikes from Hacker News that my site gets. Shared host…
> what's wrong with shared hosting? You answered that yourself: > It costs less than $10/month That’s a lot of dollars for a static website. There are a myriad of free options and there have been for years. Kinda disappointing that they weren’t mentioned. Anyone wanting to deploy a static website knows the big 4, completely free: Netlify, Vercel, CloudFlare Pages, GitHub Pages.
Sure, that is a lot for hosting a single static site. But, that $10 essentially gives you unlimited sites, unlimited email hosting, SSL cert management, lots of storage, unlimited network, and much more…
Re: Static site hosting hurdles
#156Any simple thing can be made overly complex. If you're dealing with a truly simple static site, upload your client-side code to Netlify and call it a day. If you want more control, then it will come with more complexity.
Re: Static site hosting hurdles
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is great but what the article is about that you're underestimating is the decision anxiety and subsequent complexity of arriving at the specific configuration you've posted. Even after you've for some reason decided on which tech to use (nginx, etc.), it doesn't set itself up (well it does but not in as easy-to-use config as yours). Examples of how to configure it well are going to vary depending on where you re…
> This is great but what the article is about that you're underestimating is the decision anxiety and subsequent complexity of arriving at the specific configuration you've posted. The same can be said about finding your static site generator, your favorite social media, the color of your car, your home deco, the race of your next dog... If you want a life where people do the choices for you and stuff edibles into yo…
That's fair but...
- SSGs do have some of the same problems as mentioned in the articles. Selection could be easier.
- Social media is mostly selected based on networks, so that's not as relevant here.
- Colour of your car, home deco.... "race"? of your next dog are subjective/aesthetic and not as functionally imperative. So not quite so comparable.
Taking your car analogy and looking at selecting - say - the model of car, this is much easier. They're broadly arranged into obvious well-understand functional categories, and unless you're a dedicated car nut who WANTS to invest time & energy into customisation, they generally are drivable and function well straight out of the lot. Much easier to set up than a static host or SSG.
Re: Static site hosting hurdles
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another DreamHost fan here. I host dozens of hybrid sites on both the shared hosting and VPS and the service is great. My setup is pretty simple, a Perl-based SSG which generates static HTML on-demand if it happens to be missing from the tree. I've had a few minor issues over the years, often self-inflicted, and whenever I use the support panel, I get a helpful human response within an couple of hours, usually with a…
Complete agree. Been DH customer since 2004. Just wish they used newer hardware than they do on their VPS & Dedicated offering.
I have no idea what kind of hardware they use for VPS, but whatever thing I'm doing, they've handled it well. Haven't tried Dedicated yet.
Re: Static site hosting hurdles
#159Static hosting on VPS cite is easy as hell. Get a VPS with Ubuntu 22.04 for as low as 3 Euros/Month, execute the following commands: ``` sudo apt-get install -y nginx python3-certbot-nginx certbot sudo ufw allow "Nginx Full" sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default sudo mkdir -p /srv/https/website sudo chown -vR $MYUSER:$MYUSER /srv/https/website echo "I've created my website here." > /srv/https/website/index.htm…
Yeah but what about SSL? You’ll need a handful of more lines of nginx, plus a script that runs once a month or so to get a new LetsEncrypt cert. Supposing that script you write or copy/paste works, now you’re good.
Until your site gets mentioned on HN or other social media. If you are in fact using a 3 euro/month VPS you’re almost certainly sharing 1-2 CPU cores with some other colocated VPSes. If your site gets a sudden surge in demand (and particularly if you have any images or video on your site) you’re either going to get hugged to death, or worse, people will complain that your site loads slowly and accuse you of writing too much JS.
My recommendation is to use Github/GitLab pages with a free Cloudflare in front for caching and SSL. That’s the setup I use for my site (https://chrisuehlinger.com, but grumps beware: it is absolutely soaked in JS). It’s free/month, doesn’t require moving parts like a manually rolled LetsEncrypt bot, and holds up when my site gets traffic.
Re: Static site hosting hurdles
#160Uh what's wrong with shared hosting? I use Dreamhost but there are dozens of others. It costs less than $10/month and I've used it since 2009. I think the industry (or part of a generation of programmers) somehow collectively forgot that it exists. I don't see any mention of it in the article -- it solves the problem exactly. It easily serves and survives all the spikes from Hacker News that my site gets. Shared host…
Another DreamHost fan here. I host dozens of hybrid sites on both the shared hosting and VPS and the service is great. My setup is pretty simple, a Perl-based SSG which generates static HTML on-demand if it happens to be missing from the tree. I've had a few minor issues over the years, often self-inflicted, and whenever I use the support panel, I get a helpful human response within an couple of hours, usually with a…
What you're describing is a caching system, not a static site generation system.