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I need to leave my mac running (or install IPFS on a VPS) so that if anyone wants to read my personal site there is a source online that can provide the content

I need to leave my mac running (or install IPFS on a VPS) so that if anyone wants to read my personal site there is a source online that can provide the content right?

bmcusick 9y ago
Not necessarily. IPFS is sort of like Bittorrent on steroids. You can think of yourself as the first seeder of your website, but as long as there are other network participants that have a full copy of your site, your home PC doesn't need to be online for people to access it.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  Exactly. They do need to get a copy of your site first, though, and they do that by accessing it (so someone else needs to have visited your site first). Otherwise, you can use https://www.eternum.io/ https://www.eternum.io/ (which is a service we also made) to basically seed your site for a few cents a month.
- iagovar 9y ago
  I'm a layman in this stuff, can IPFS sites be accesible from http?
  - bmcusick 9y ago
    IPFS is its own standard, so your homepage might look like ipfs://blog.iagovar.co But since most browsers don't support IPFS natively yet there are IPFS gateways that allow you to access IPFS sites through them.
  - detaro 9y ago
    through gateways, yes. There a bunch of public ones, or you can run your own.
  - zeta0134 9y ago
    Yes, through any of the publically available IPFS gateways. ipfs.io is one of the more common official ones, but since they're all connected to the same network, in theory the content should be available from any of them. You can also host your own gateway (locally or publically) and point your browser at it. If you're wanting to make something with DNS in front of it to mask the long IPFS content hashes, you can do that too, there's a good overview of the process in their examples: https://ipfs.io/docs/examples/example-viewer/example#../websites/README.md https://ipfs.io/docs/examples/example-viewer/example#../webs...
  - e12e 9y ago
    As much as email, usenet irc and jabber/xmpp can be accessed over Http(s) - there are gateways. (xmpp might be a special case here - I'm uncertain of the underlying transport for jabber; could be that js+http(s) is enough to simulate actual jabber client?)
- magnetic 9y ago
  Right, but when you want to publish something on the internet, wondering (and hoping) whether there is at least one copy out there in the ether is the last thing you want to have to worry about: your site has to be accessible all the time. In practice, it does mean you need an origin available all the time, and it's either you providing it, or some other service you pay to do it. I don't think there's any magic.
  - fwip 9y ago
    Agreed. It does do some magic for you, when your site gets posted on HackerNews, but in practice you still want to maintain at least one permanent host for anything semi-important.
carussell 9y ago
Although not IPFS, Dat[1] is another protocol (associated with Beaker Browser, linked in another comment here), and there's a group trying to build the P2P web on that. In the case of Dat, you can create an account on Hashbase[2], and that will give you a permaseed for your content, even if your device is offline. And then, of course, if you have enough fans they're able to relay your content amongst themselves and any other interested parties who show up. 1. https://datproject.org https://datproject.org 2. https://hashbase.io https://hashbase.io
ChrisClark 9y ago
That's the reasoning behind IPFS's Filecoin project. You pay a small fee for people to permanently pin you IPFS content. With incentives for storage providers to have available space, and data duplication. It's set up so that storage providers themselves are 'miners' in the blockchain. Which drives them to compete for the lowest price possible for storage, benefiting users.

I need to leave my mac running (or install IPFS on a VPS) so that if anyone wants to read my personal site there is a source online that can provide the content right?

bmcusick 9y ago

Not necessarily. IPFS is sort of like Bittorrent on steroids. You can think of yourself as the first seeder of your website, but as long as there are other network participants that have a full copy of your site, your home PC doesn't need to be online for people to access it.

StavrosK 9y ago
Exactly. They do need to get a copy of your site first, though, and they do that by accessing it (so someone else needs to have visited your site first). Otherwise, you can use https://www.eternum.io/ https://www.eternum.io/ (which is a service we also made) to basically seed your site for a few cents a month.
iagovar 9y ago
I'm a layman in this stuff, can IPFS sites be accesible from http?
- bmcusick 9y ago
  IPFS is its own standard, so your homepage might look like ipfs://blog.iagovar.co But since most browsers don't support IPFS natively yet there are IPFS gateways that allow you to access IPFS sites through them.
- detaro 9y ago
  through gateways, yes. There a bunch of public ones, or you can run your own.
- zeta0134 9y ago
  Yes, through any of the publically available IPFS gateways. ipfs.io is one of the more common official ones, but since they're all connected to the same network, in theory the content should be available from any of them. You can also host your own gateway (locally or publically) and point your browser at it. If you're wanting to make something with DNS in front of it to mask the long IPFS content hashes, you can do that too, there's a good overview of the process in their examples: https://ipfs.io/docs/examples/example-viewer/example#../websites/README.md https://ipfs.io/docs/examples/example-viewer/example#../webs...
- e12e 9y ago
  As much as email, usenet irc and jabber/xmpp can be accessed over Http(s) - there are gateways. (xmpp might be a special case here - I'm uncertain of the underlying transport for jabber; could be that js+http(s) is enough to simulate actual jabber client?)
magnetic 9y ago
Right, but when you want to publish something on the internet, wondering (and hoping) whether there is at least one copy out there in the ether is the last thing you want to have to worry about: your site has to be accessible all the time. In practice, it does mean you need an origin available all the time, and it's either you providing it, or some other service you pay to do it. I don't think there's any magic.
- fwip 9y ago
  Agreed. It does do some magic for you, when your site gets posted on HackerNews, but in practice you still want to maintain at least one permanent host for anything semi-important.

carussell 9y ago

Although not IPFS, Dat[1] is another protocol (associated with Beaker Browser, linked in another comment here), and there's a group trying to build the P2P web on that. In the case of Dat, you can create an account on Hashbase[2], and that will give you a permaseed for your content, even if your device is offline. And then, of course, if you have enough fans they're able to relay your content amongst themselves and any other interested parties who show up. 1. https://datproject.org https://datproject.org 2. https://hashbase.io https://hashbase.io

ChrisClark 9y ago

That's the reasoning behind IPFS's Filecoin project. You pay a small fee for people to permanently pin you IPFS content. With incentives for storage providers to have available space, and data duplication. It's set up so that storage providers themselves are 'miners' in the blockchain. Which drives them to compete for the lowest price possible for storage, benefiting users.