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Which service do you use to host static website?

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Re: Which service do you use to host static website?

#31

Post by samlewis »

GitHub Pages with a static site generator and Travis CI is superb.

I have my blog [0] setup so that all I need to do in order to publish a new article is add a markdown file to my GitHub pages source repo. Travis then builds the html and pushes it back to the GitHub pages repo.

You can easily add files and edit markdown on the GitHub web interface so I essentially use GitHub as a CRM. If you're interested, have a look at my GitHub Pages repo [1] and Travis CI build config [2].

[0] http://www.samlewis.me [1] https://github.com/samvrlewis/samvrlewis.github.io/tree/webs... [2] https://github.com/samvrlewis/samvrlewis.github.io/blob/webs...

Re: Which service do you use to host static website?

#32

Post by woutr_be »

benaiah wrote: post #23
luxuryballs wrote: post #20

I’d like to add to the question a further question: which one would be best in the situation where I want to regenerate the static page programmatically? So basically something running on a server somewhere will run periodically (probably on a trigger) and deploy a new copy of the static page to the proposed host. So the question is which host has the best platform for that kind of rapid deployment? Hoping not to use…

(disclaimer: Netlify employee) Netlify supports running a build script automatically whenever you push to one of our supported Git providers (we also have a CLI tool for those who prefer to do that manually). This includes creating deploy previews for branches other than your main deploy branch (such as PRs). This is actually how the project I work on, Netlify CMS[0] works - the CMS is a completely open source, front…

Since you're here, I would like to take this opportunity to ask a quick question. My Jekyll site is already running on Netlify, but instead of manually creating files, I used Google Sheets and a simple NodeJS script to sync everything. Would it be possible to run this NodeJS script on Netlify CD and push to git and then let Netlify build my Jekyll site? (The script basically pulls a Google Sheet, creates markdown files and download and resizes some images)

Re: Which service do you use to host static website?

#33

Post by jwilliams »

I think I've tried everything. Firebase, Netlify, S3+Cloudfront, Github+Cloudflare are the main contenders.

I benchmarked them myself and using https://www.webpagetest.org/ in numerous locales.

Netlify has the edge as their publishing model is slick. They know there has been an update and can trigger the nodes automatically. My only complaint? They have a soft bandwidth limit - I wish I could pay to lift it. I know they won't enforce - it's there to stop abuse. But they can take my $. For the apex (sans "www") domain, you need to let them manage DNS, which is backended by NS1.

Firebase hosting is excellent. Really top class. But I found it to be a little slower on the deploy side. If you think you may use some kind of backend functionality, this is a smart option. Even with an A Record on the DNS they were fast. I think Google's Anycast network must be top notch (no surprise, really).

Github+Cloudflare was pretty good too. But the invalidation model was something you needed to work with. Plus every now and then I'd hit a cold node (I assume) and it was slower. Overall it was great, but just a nose behind and not as easy to use. One area where they really were consistently ahead was DNS.

So lots of good options. Reality is they are so close you're best going for the option you're most comfortable with. For vanilla I love Netlify. For anything JavaScript-y Firebase is great.

Edit: I was curious, so I checked on Netlify. I think they're hosted on Google Cloud... Which would make sense.

Re: Which service do you use to host static website?

#34

Post by vfulco »

wilkystyle wrote: post #15
cstrahan wrote: post #7

S3 and Cloudfront, with recurring Lambda to update Let’s Encrypt TLS certs.

FYI ACM certificates are free [0], and will be automatically rotated. I use Hugo + S3 + CloudFront + ACM cert for SSL. [0] https://aws.amazon.com/certificate-manager/faqs/#billing

Thanks for this outstanding idea. Unfortunately even for legitimate, properly registered businesses in China, hosting on S3 is illegal for some inexplicable reason. Any other very light, easy to manage versions for EC2, preferably something that can be run with Dokku?

Re: Which service do you use to host static website?

#36

Post by stephenr »

eat_veggies wrote: post #11
subsidd wrote: post #4

Digital Ocean.

Seems like overkill for just a static site. I'd rather upload my assets somewhere and have it served out of the box than configuring and securing a web server for arguably negligible benefit.

Making your site reliant on multiple other companies' services (eg s3 relies on a heap of other aws services and can go down if those dependencies are down) just to host some static files seems overkill to me, when a single server you control can do it for you with minimal setup.

Re: Which service do you use to host static website?

#37

Post by rwieruch »

I use Hugo [0] as a static website generator. They have plenty of themes [1] to choose from. You can still adjust it with basic knowledge in HTML/CSS. Afterward you can chose where to host it. You can use Github Pages [2] for free or pay for a service like DigitalOcean (starting with 5€ a month which scales well) [3]. I wrote a technical cheatsheet [4] on how to setup your own website with these ingredients.

- [0] https://gohugo.io/

- [1] http://themes.gohugo.io/

- [2] https://pages.github.com/

- [3] https://www.digitalocean.com/

- [4] https://www.robinwieruch.de/own-website-in-five-days/

Re: Which service do you use to host static website?

#38

Post by foxhop »

nginx at my house.

nginx on a $5/mo virtual private server (vultr, linode, digitalocean)

nginx is incredible at serving static content. Also a CDN is often overkill for the majority of websites. If you have never setup a web server before, its worth taking a couple hours (or as much time as you need) to learn. It's a very empowering experience!

for comments I'm building a service called Remarkbox (https://www.remarkbox.com) - its live on about 15 sites right now and growing.

Re: Which service do you use to host static website?

#39

Post by leon_sbt »

Firebase here as well.

Why I like it:

-CLI makes it easy to use.

-Deploying to the internet is as easy as "firebase deploy"

-Comes with HTTPS for free and with zero config

-Automatmagically uses Firebase's CDN

-Can serve with your custom domain name

-Low cost (for my needs/traffic levels)

-(Mostly)Straightforward documentation/references

Pain point(s):

-Slightly fragmented documentation. This was only one instance, so I might be blowing it out of proportion. I wanted to have Clean URLs in my website, there was no mention of that capability in the Firebase docs -> "Customize hosting behavior".

    But the only instance I found this feature was from a random Firebase blog post from 2 years ago. 

    https://firebase.googleblog.com/2015/12/a-host-of improvements_61.html
-I can't view the contents of what I'm hosting from the web based (At least I tried to, and can't figure it out.)

-Deploys can be slow(30 secs -2 min), but honestly I should setup a CD pipeline and stop staring at it while it's deploying.

I originally was going to use Google Cloud Storage, but they don't support HTTPS out of the box.

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