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A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

mxb.dev

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Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#31

Post by miles_matthias »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #25
miles_matthias wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I'd love to see this as a docker container or Makefile where dependencies are automatically pulled in if not present on the host machine.

I think even Docker might be a big ask. I mean, my experience so far has been that a lot of the people that this is targeted towards are still using platforms like Wordpress, Drupal, and Magento (all php...). Heck, git adoption still isn't 100% in this market; I just recently received sftp credentials from an agency that works in this niche.

Command line would be the only necessity. You can write a script that could download docker & run it. That's what I meant by Makefile too.

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#34

Post by whatsmyusername »

Meph504 wrote: post #17

I mean, call me crazy, if this is for an emergency, wouldn't it make more sense to provide a small archive with the source files in it, no third party at all. requires an unarchiver, and a text editor.

Way above the technical skill level of a lot of people.

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#35

Post by mac-chaffee »

sl1ck731 wrote: post #9
mac-chaffee wrote: post #5

Wouldn't the people putting out emergency website likely be local governments? If so, wouldn't there be hurdles to using cloud providers like Netlify? How do local governments usually host their websites?

I work with some local governments in cloud consulting. They use different clouds the same as anyone else. We actually see a lot of local governments (cities or metro agencies) doing things in AWS. I'd say the likelihood in my experience of them grabbing this kind of thing and deploying it is probably pretty low. The ones I work with would leave that up to a contractor.

Great insight, thank you!

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#36

Post by tmpz22 »

People are missing a fundamentally important point. You CANNOT trust fremium services to prioritize your traffic at busy times because they will always cut back free users especially if it's interfering with the service they are providing paying customers. This includes Google Sheets, Netlify, Cloudfront, AWS, EVERYBODY.

To create truly fault tolerant services you CANNOT assume a fremium service will go out on a limb for you during a critical time.

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#38

Post by nkozyra »

tmpz22 wrote: post #36

People are missing a fundamentally important point. You CANNOT trust fremium services to prioritize your traffic at busy times because they will always cut back free users especially if it's interfering with the service they are providing paying customers. This includes Google Sheets, Netlify, Cloudfront, AWS, EVERYBODY. To create truly fault tolerant services you CANNOT assume a fremium service will go out on a limb…

Seriously. A single web server with no dynamic content will handle a TON of traffic.

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#39

Post by t0astbread »

nkozyra wrote: post #37

What am I missing? A highly performant web server like nginx. Static html content. Done.

A way for government employees who don't know what a command line is to edit it.

Fault tolerance in case something happens to your web server.

A way for people to read it offline when their internet connection goes down (presuming they haven't saved the HTML).

Re: A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites

#40

Post by ddevault »

https://emergency-site.dev/posts/2020-03-22-example-post/

I would provide much less background information here. "What you need to do" should definitely not be below the fold. You should boil it down to:

1. This is happening 2. This is what you personally need to do about it.

Then add whatever else you want after that.

I know this is just an example, but it should set a good example.

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