27 ms·

Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?

451 points by offtop5 6y ago

This is more of a thought experiment, I know a multitude of ways to do this which require loads of setup, jumping through AWS hoops, etc. I'd like ideally way to deploy to a hosted service with a single command. Imagine Heroku but even easier.

treeface9000 6y ago
Netlify is really easy. Just drag and drop your static site's folder.
LinuxBender 6y ago
If you mean pure html/css, then the least friction would be NeoCities [1] It is free and not owned by Microsoft or Google. [1] - https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/
- john-doe 6y ago
  Seconded. Their CLI has all you need, even git hooks. Personally I just use `neocities push .`
  - LolWolf 6y ago
    Thirded. Use it to host my blog; free tier is good, but I really like them and have really phenomenal limits, etc, so just pay (even though my blog is not updated nearly as much as I'd like)
- pwdisswordfish6 6y ago
  You are limited to one *.neocities.org site, otherwise it's $60 per year.
  - poopsmithe 6y ago
    I have unlimited neocities subdomains and pay $0 a year. I must be on a discontinued plan, but at one time there was a $100 lifetime offer.
    - john-doe 6y ago
      Sounds like the perfect plan. How many of the companies mentioned in this thread will be around in 10 years? I'd bet on neocities.
      - Can_Not 6y ago
        What makes you think neocities stands out and above?
        john-doe 6y ago
        From what I understand the motivation behind neocities is more political (humanist) than commercial. Also it's fully open-source (the data could easily be hosted anywhere else for cheap). You can read more about their stance on their blog: https://blog.neocities.org/ https://blog.neocities.org/
- xorcist 6y ago
  Neocities must have an interesting story behind it. I seem to remember something about it being part of an effort to salvage Geocities. Has the story been written down somewhere?
namirez 6y ago
GitHub pages! It’s free so I don’t think it can get any cheaper.
trcarney 6y ago
Speaking of AWS, I recently deployed a gatsby web site with AWS Amplify. It links to your git repo and will automatically deploy when you merge to master/main. You can also deploy branches you want to test out. As this was my second website I have ever deployed, I was amazed at how easy it was to setup.
- cpach 6y ago
  This. I can warmly recommend AWS Amplify for hosting static sites. Very convenient and easy to set up.
- harrisonjackson 6y ago
  Yep - we recently launched a couple of react sites on amplify and have found it super easy for our team to adopt. Hooked up to gitlab in a few seconds, added custom domain easily (automatically updated route53 for us), each PR gets its own deployment behind a password for testing, and develop and master are updated automatically on merge.
maxk42 6y ago
The most popular currently is probably https://www.netlify.com/ https://www.netlify.com/ - 100% free. If AWS + CloudFront is too difficult and you don't mind spending a few bucks, it's pretty easy to get started with LightSail - about $3.50 a month.
- enhdless 6y ago
  Specifically Netlify Drop: https://app.netlify.com/drop https://app.netlify.com/drop You don't even need to create an account, just upload a zip of your files.
  - mcintyre1994 6y ago
    You don’t even have to zip it!
patwolf 6y ago
Firebase hosting work well.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  Firebase as in Google's Firebase? I guess the SEO is already done for you, but I'm still not sure I'd make everyone talk to Google to visit my site, even if the hosting is free.
Strom 6y ago
Google App Engine has a very generous free quota. The setup isn't as easy as good old FTP, because you need to define your static files in a configuration file. Once the config is written the deployment is a single command though. https://cloud.google.com/appengine https://cloud.google.com/appengine
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  I think you're better off using bucket storage rather than App Engine for a static site.
- modeless 6y ago
  The free bandwidth quota isn't enormous, but if you put Cloudflare in front then you're good for practically unlimited free traffic. App Engine is overkill for a completely static site but it's great for something that is mostly static with one or two things that change.
- nocommandline 6y ago
  >>> The setup isn't as easy as good old FTP, because you need to define your static files in a configuration file.<<< Are you referring to specifying the path to your static folder/directory in your app.yaml file? If so, that doesn't seem so difficult to me. Yes, you're right - the deployment is a single command for something as simple as a static website until the next time you need to make changes (then you'll have to root around your terminal again) or you decide to upgrade from static to something a bit more complex. Shameless plug here - my site, https://nocommandline.com https://nocommandline.com, allows you to just select and click deploy; no routing around in terminal/commandline.
ptk921 6y ago
I continue to be a big fan of surge [1]. A number of toy projects/demos of mine have been developed using create-react-app, rendered to static files, then deployed via surge. [1] = https://surge.sh/ https://surge.sh/
- subpixel 6y ago
  Git project? Netlify. Not a git project? Surge!
- srg0 6y ago
  I used surge once recently, and it just works. What I didn't figure out when the same site is deployed to the same domain name, and when it gets a new one. I'm sure it's documented, it's just not obvious (and for a throw away web page it didn't matter).
cube2222 6y ago
GitHub Pages are probably the easiest to work with, with node modules built for easy one-command publishing. Though for production I'd probably use S3+Cloudfront.
- TranquilMarmot 6y ago
  Also auto-publishing on pushes to a specific branch with GitHub actions is really awesome.
johnklos 6y ago
Just start bozohttpd.
high_byte 6y ago
glitch.com
F117-DK 6y ago
Cloudflare Pages, or Firebase Hosting. Both can be spiced up with cloud functions.
jppope 6y ago
My Favs: - Cloudflare - AWS s3 - Github pages - Google
- techrat 6y ago
  For the occasional single static page website I sometimes need to have hosted for a domain, even Blogger does a pretty good job. Make a new blog on Blogger, switch to classic theme, edit the template, delete everything in that box and cut/paste your HTML. Images can be hosted by making a new blog entry, uploading images to it and saving it as a draft. Once you disable the Blogger top navbar, the theme as a single page website is pretty transparent and works well.
iosjunkie 6y ago
My weekend project is to move a small personal site to Cloudflare Pages[0]. Can't vouch for it yet, but it might be worth a look. [0] https://pages.cloudflare.com/ https://pages.cloudflare.com/
- slenk 6y ago
  Got my invite a bit ago. Haven't converted my site yet. How did it go?
peanut_worm 6y ago
Surge.sh is probably the easiest and fastest. Host a static site in one command. I like Netlify for most stuff personally.
ducharmdev 6y ago
GitHub Pages or Netlify for sure. With either of these options, your static site can be set up to deploy whenever there's new commits to the specified branch. Me and a friend mentor for Code Louisville, and we're able to get the beginner frontend students up and running very quickly using these options - they're free and much easier to use.
- SwiftyBug 6y ago
  Also you can deploy your `public` folder to Netlify simply by drag-and-drop. I love this.
- anm89 6y ago
  I've been very happy with this setup for my simple personal marketing site.
- gabriel897 6y ago
  +1 I have been using Netlify to host 3 static sites for many months now. Have had 0 issues. Set up took <15 minutes. Making changes is a breeze.
- linkdd 6y ago
  I discovered Netlify through Netlify CMS. I had a pretty bad opinion about Netlify CMS, so I was pretty sure Netlify was going to be at least as bad. Damn, I have never been so wrong: - the interface is so intuitive I never opened the documentation - this is FAST (the bottleneck to see my website live is now my browser cache) - no need to create a Github Actions pipeline to deploy, just say "hey, my repo is here" - automatically integrated with Let's Encrypt for custom domains - deploy previews!!! And so much more.
  - Kaze404 6y ago
    My favorite feature is automatic deployment of pull requests. I love it, and I wish there was something as cheap and easy for backend services as well. Though I guess it's not too necessary if you implement testing properly :p
AlchemistCamp 6y ago
https://render.com https://render.com (lead by early Stripe infra employee!)
- nknealk 6y ago
  Seconding render. I host a Hugo site with them. Their free tier is pretty feature-rich and I love the automated builds. My site is set up so that any push to the main branch on a private github repo gets automatically checked out, compiled to HTML, and updated on their CDN.
- sevencolors 6y ago
  Yeah loving their setup. Very Heroku-like. Free for static hosts and almost as cheap as Digital Ocean for servers
  - da39a3ee 6y ago
    I'm using them for a rust rocket site, and about to for a django/vue thing. It's extremely slick and easy to get going. But they are just personal projects. I haven't thought about whether it would be suitable for a prod deploy, or how I'd do something like take django down while database migrations are running on deploy.
- digianarchist 6y ago
  Looks similar to Digital Ocean App Platform except they have much better bandwidth allowances, apex to www subdomain direction, cron jobs and persistent disk.
Chris2048 6y ago
I guess cheap and easy are opposite directions in a way, but if you are totally static, I guess a Digital-Ocean instance isn't too difficult, with some leeway to improve the response-time over time; Just slap a Nginx or something on it, serve up the statics, and maybe establish a way to upload stuff (scp?), Just keep hold of backups (docker images, configs/dotfiles, and actual content), put good protection on the droplets (they are targets for hacking). The benefit is that it's just a linux distro of your choice, so you can use whatever you are familiar with, and there is scope to add non-static service if needs be.
- armonraphiel 6y ago
  They have a managed service for folks with docker instances. You also get a few free static sites as well https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/ https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/
kioleanu 6y ago
If you use Fastmail, it comes with static website hosting included
- deleted 6y ago
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gibbonsd1 6y ago
https://twitter.com/daringdanz/status/1214618864643764224 https://twitter.com/daringdanz/status/1214618864643764224
zck 6y ago
I use https://nearlyfreespeech.net https://nearlyfreespeech.net for my static site. It isn't free -- it is pretty cheap -- but it has a lot going for it. It requires no custom tooling -- I upload via rsync. This makes it trivial to migrate to a new provider if necessary. I develop my site locally, then rsync it up. I have a custom domain pointed at the site, and also a custom .htaccess, so I have a good amount of control over the site. I do things like serve html without the .html filetype in the url; e.g. https://zck.org/emacsconf2020 https://zck.org/emacsconf2020 is stored on the server as emacsconf2020.html . (I do this so Emacs recognizes the files as html, but keeps the urls clean). It's a nice tool if you want to get a little involved in your setup, without getting wrapped up in proprietary tooling. It does charge for what you use, so it's not a great site if you are going to host Blu-ray images that get downloaded from everyone on HN.
- zaphod4prez 6y ago
  I'm a huge fan of NearlyFreeSpeech as well! Its super cheap, has a great user-forum, and just... feels like something I can wrap my head around easily. Love it
- RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
  I have also used nearlyfreespeech for years, and I'm very satisfied with the price model and clear, easy-to-use account management pages. My site is entirely statically-served; I have one script for rebuilding my local copy and a second for rsyncing to my NFS host.
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  Yep NFSN is great. If you have a bunch of static files it's really just `rsync myfiles mywebsite@ssh.phx.nearlyfreespeech.net:` and you're done. No set up, no nothing.
  - zck 6y ago
    Yeah! The command I use is: `rsync --recursive -vv --delete --filter="protect /.well-known" /path/to/site/on/local/box user_site@ssh.phx.nearlyfreespeech.net:/home/public/` I add `--delete` to clean up any files I might've created on the box (e.g., to test .htaccess), and then `--filter="protect /.well-known" so that I keep any files related to serving as https.
ijustwanttovote 6y ago
I'm trying out Cloudflare Pages, it's pretty good so far.
ianopolous 6y ago
You could host it P2P in Peergos - https://peergos.org/posts/p2p-web-hosting https://peergos.org/posts/p2p-web-hosting Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder
- emptysongglass 6y ago
  I tried but you have a waiting list.
  - ianopolous 6y ago
    If you added yourself we'll onboard you soon.
codebolt 6y ago
If you have an MSDN subscription (e.g. through work), using your free Azure credits to host a site is a pretty good option.
mgarfias 6y ago
I use S3's static site hosting. works great.
openfuture 6y ago
I use pinata to pin an ipfs hash and then a public gateway (currently using cloudflare). It's free and a fun programming assignment to script the pinata and DNS APIs so that I can update my site.
lawwantsin17 6y ago
Just a reminder you can host a static site or any other kind of site on your home computer. That's the internet folks.
- waiseristy 6y ago
  And then you leak your info to whatever malicious site does a port scan to its visitors. I'm highly anti residential hosting
leerob 6y ago
Check out Vercel! [1] You can deploy for free, with a single command, in a few minutes. Disclaimer: I work at Vercel, happy to answer any questions. [1]: http://vercel.com/ http://vercel.com/
- romellem 6y ago
  I will second this recommendation. I use Vercel for all my static sites and have found it wonderful to work with and well documented.
- davidwparker 6y ago
  I've been a happy user of Netlify, Github Pages and now Vercel. I'm really enjoying Vercel lately! It's been really great. Recently also tested out Cloudflare Pages, but I think they have a bit of work to do before they can match Vercel.
- m00dy 6y ago
  I also use Vercel. It is a good product. Disclaimer: I don't work at Vercel and I'm just a regular guy
- adamhearn 6y ago
  Vercel free tier is awesome!!
- adriancooney 6y ago
  Very happy Vercel user here. My default choice now -- supremely simple and fast deployments with great UX.
- wishinghand 6y ago
  Not to bring down the mood on how easy it is for static sites on Vercel, but I still get sad about it moving away from server side or Docker based deploys. I really miss that workflow.
- mkl 6y ago
  Your pricing page is confusing to me. There is a free tier, and it says "Pay as you grow", but I can't see what the limits on the free tier are or how growth is measured. How does it work?
benbristow 6y ago
Azure Static Web Apps is free at the minute, and I've heard the pricing will be very reasonable once it comes out of preview (in the cents/pennies probably unless you're really popular!) https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/app-service/static/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/app-service/stati... Would recommend giving it a bash, or you could deploy it manually with Azure Blob Storage Websites and a simple deployment CI pipeline.
- kkielhofner 6y ago
  With Github Actions the CI more or less "just works". With free private repos and that kind of integration it's a pretty neat setup.
nonamenoslogan 6y ago
I host my .org on Github Pages.
yannikyeo 6y ago
Digital Ocean App Platform gives 3 free static sites.
- indigodaddy 6y ago
  Note the 1G transfer limit per site for free tier: https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing
purec 6y ago
I personally use Firebase for all my static sites. Completely free and fast. If you need to run some backend function they have Firebase functions which is free to a certain degree too. Example site: https://jeremyshaw.co.nz https://jeremyshaw.co.nz Other than that I'm sure Github Pages and Netlify are fine, both very popular options. Worst case you put it on Amazon S3 and get charged a fraction of a dollar every month .
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  Except if you get hit by a DDoS. The fact that you cannot put a cap on your spending is infuriating (the official AWS answer is "we do not want to break your business" (even if I want to)). To be fair, some complaining or crying in such cases usually gets your bill reversed.
  - villasv 6y ago
    You can, it's just very convoluted. You can set up billing alarms and use alarms as triggers for actions.
    - VPenkov 6y ago
      One of those stories that get posted every other month about "How I racked up $xx000 bill for Firebase" explained that they had billing alarms but they weren't exactly real time. Also, you might be the main/only site administrator, in which case falling asleep might end up badly for you.
  - mtlynch 6y ago
    You don't mean literally distributed denial of service attack, right? It's super easy to keep serving a static resource, so I think you'd need a huge amount of traffic to put a dent in Firebase's static hosting capacity. I've had spikes of up to 300k visitors to my Firebase blog in a month, and the bill was like $150. It seems hard to get bitten by huge surprise costs from a blog on Firebase static hosting, even if someone's using a botnet to try to drive up your bill. Edit: Thinking about it a little more, I guess you could find the largest resource on a blog and direct your botnet to download it nonstop repeatedly, and that would be orders of magnitude more expensive than even large organic traffic.
datacruncher01 6y ago
I've played with a free .tk domain and use their framed redirect (http only) to point to a itty.bitty.site page. Works transparently as far as a user goes.
BenoitP 6y ago
> jumping through AWS hoops I found S3 static hosting to be fairly straightforward. Once set up, a single `aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path` updates the content.
- framecowbird 6y ago
  Agreed! It's super easy
  - PradeetPatel 6y ago
    It was observed that setting up let's encrypt certs on s3 static sites can be a unique challenge
- tobilg 6y ago
  You might have a look at https://github.com/tobilg/serverless-aws-static-websites https://github.com/tobilg/serverless-aws-static-websites to get a single command deploy including CDN and a domain
- starbugs 6y ago
  I suggest putting Cloudflare in front of it. I have virtually no AWS costs with S3 that way. If you don't mind that Cloudflare + S3 means it's not fully end to end encrypted.
  - indigodaddy 6y ago
    Can someone advise on if a CF Pages site would be fully end to end encrypted?
jsilence 6y ago
Regarding some cost free solutions mentioned here: how does the saying 'if it is free, then you are the product' hold up?
- snicker7 6y ago
  Likely a loss leader, since "free static site hosting" is usually not the main product.
- dalmo3 6y ago
  I suppose Netlify free users pay it back in free advertisement.
- crazypython 6y ago
  surge.sh was born out of a Mozilla-sponsored project to make web hosting cheaper. They are doing it for charity.
- bombcar 6y ago
  The free plans usually have limits such that they’ll work for individuals but not businesses. And someone using free plan X at home is more likely to choose Pod plan Y from the same provider for work.
kpats 6y ago
If you want a pre-configured way to publish your notes or digital garden, Dendron's got an easy to use 1-click publish: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/53de5c1e-b20c-4adc-ae48-e1659ecc6d13.html https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/53de5c1e-b20c-4adc-ae48-e1659e...
PaywallBuster 6y ago
Cloudflare Pages
pgroves 6y ago
I have my site in an S3 bucket with the static-site flag activated. It would not win for 'easiest'. However, it's the only thing in my personal AWS account right now and my monthly bill is $0.83
- crazypython 6y ago
  An S3 bucket is intended as storage, not retrieval. Downloading from S3 means grabbing shards. You should put a proper CDN, like CloudFront or Cloudflare, in front.
  - Diederich 6y ago
    > You should put a proper CDN, like CloudFront or Cloudflare, in front. I understand what you're saying, but why? I assume the site in question is pretty low volume. What's wrong with serving directly from S3?
    - viraptor 6y ago
      You can't get https on S3. Also many interesting headers are only available via cloudfront. Also you get a little bit of protection from someone sending lots of traffic to make you spend $$$
    - miyuru 6y ago
      S3 does not support gzip compression. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26600816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26600816
  - erikmolin 6y ago
    Why, if his monthly bill is 83 cents, and he values his time? Does not using a CDN impact performance in a crippling way that neither me nor the poster you're replying to understands?
    - philistine 6y ago
      The big gain with putting Cloudfront in front of it is you can have HTTPS.
crazypython 6y ago
https://surge.sh https://surge.sh Free. npx surge folder
gkbrk 6y ago
Seconding the https://nearlyfreespeech.net https://nearlyfreespeech.net suggestion. I used to be their customer and had absolutely no complaints. I have switched to BunnyCDN [1] a while back, also very happy with it. Pricing is extremely cheap, and has the added benefit of being able to cache anything dynamic you might add in the future. [1]: https://bunny.net/ https://bunny.net/
- pov 6y ago
  Seconding BunnyCDN. I use it with https://lftp.yar.ru/ https://lftp.yar.ru/ in reverse mirror mode to upload/update my generated public/ folder. Easy and cheap!
- futhey 6y ago
  Bunny CDN is a great option if you want to drag and drop or FTP a website update (without a build step). Dirt cheap, and incredibly simple.
aequitas 6y ago
Check with your ISP, they often offer some 10 or sometimes 50! MB of free space to host your homepage and images under an account url, eg: http://example.com/~you http://example.com/~you. Uploading is easy, just FTP your files to their server and your done! I miss the old days :(
- tgiba 6y ago
  OVH offers 10MB hosting when you get a domain with them. With FTP access.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- Symbiote 6y ago
  The in-between days (after dial-up ISPs, but before "cloud" meant people forgot they could do things themselves) was to host the website on your own computer. For example, an old laptop, a Raspberry Pi, or an always-on-anyway desktop. I host my personal site this way. I also host about 100 mostly-static mostly-low-use websites at work similarly: with Apache on a couple of VMs. They are more reliable than the free versions of Netlify etc, and the systems work to maintain 100 static websites is little different to maintaining 5 static websites.
  - warent 6y ago
    I'm not sure how you do this unless you have a static IP somehow? In my experience ISPs don't offer that to residential clients
    - tenebrisalietum 6y ago
      There are "Dynamic DNS" services (a good free one used to be DynDNS in the 00's) that will take an API call from your home system and update a DNS with it. Many routers have support for this and if your router runs dhcpcd you can tell it to issue the call when it renews the DHCP lease from your ISP, or simply cron job it.
johnmurch 6y ago
https://workers.cloudflare.com/ https://workers.cloudflare.com/
- stephenmcirl77 6y ago
  Plus Cloudflare Pages is in beta too, CloudFlares JAMStack offering to compete with the Netlify and Vercels of the world. https://pages.cloudflare.com/ https://pages.cloudflare.com/
polyterative 6y ago
firebase hosting
skrtskrt 6y ago
Digital Ocean Apps, you get free hosting for a couple static site, you just push to the selected branch. I use Hugo but they support a bunch of different types. Digital Ocean is also just super easy to use in general.
dave_sid 6y ago
Have you tried yahoo geocities?
taleodor 6y ago
Cheapest would be Google App Engine - see more detailed comparison here - https://worklifenotes.com/2020/05/24/google-app-engine-github-actions-static-websites/ https://worklifenotes.com/2020/05/24/google-app-engine-githu...
asdev 6y ago
Firebase hosting + Gatsby has been real easy for me
second--shift 6y ago
For the extra $1-2/mo, I think a $5 DigitalOcean ubuntu/similar droplet provides a ton of value, above and beyond just hosting a "static" site at the cheapest place for less. Want email too? ez. Virtual Hosts? ez. SOCKs proxy in the cloud? literally built in.
- sitzkrieg 6y ago
  while i agree, self hosting email is fraught with traps
- alexjplant 6y ago
  I got away from self-hosted mail a few years ago and haven't looked back. There are a few flexible privacy-forward options on the market now (FastMail, Proton) and I don't have to worry about configuring DMARC/DKIM/SPF, Postfix milters, Horde/Roundcube, Courier, secure connection negotiation, X.509 certificates, or any of the other headaches associated with a quasi-legacy technology like e-mail.
m-app 6y ago
Depends on what you may already have! I was looking for something similar the other day, and remembered that I already had some redirects setup under my custom Fastmail domain; turns out they also allow you to host static HTML. You can even generate a dedicated FTP login to automate uploading. This specific case might not apply to you, but perhaps you’re already paying for another service that also offers something like this?
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tebbers 6y ago
Netlify! I use it for holding pages for client websites. Quick upload of a folder containing an index.html and a stylesheet and off you go.
- kevincox 6y ago
  Netlify also provides an endpoint to deploy a new version with a single HTTP POST of a zip file if you ever want to start scripting deploys.
hparadise 6y ago
I really like Render
j-rom 6y ago
I used to use Heroku for side projects and I recently discovered Netlify and it is definitely super easy to get set up and deploy.
talawahtech 6y ago
Check out Cloudflare Pages: https://pages.cloudflare.com/ https://pages.cloudflare.com/
felipemesquita 6y ago
Cloudflare pages offers unlimited sites, requests and bandwidth for free (limited to 500 bilds per month) https://pages.cloudflare.com/ https://pages.cloudflare.com/
Aperocky 6y ago
I wouldn't say jumping through AWS hoop is loads of setup.. but I have 2 static sites with domain setup on AWS with S3 buckets and route53 and they cost about $3 per month in total. Domain costs are separate but I don't think that belong here.
amasad 6y ago
Replit (free): - Go to repl.new/html - Write code - Hit run, deployed! - (optional) link domain Docs: https://docs.replit.com/repls/web-hosting https://docs.replit.com/repls/web-hosting
jMyles 6y ago
NearlyFreeSpeech is an incredible service. It has honed its focus on simplicity even as virtually every one of its competitors have attempted to commodity complexity. Don't get me wrong: I enjoy complex services as well. But for simple web hosting, NearlyFreeSpeech is the best I've found, and whatever is second isn't close.
alimoeeny 6y ago
Google Cloud run although not free is great for many situations, like if your website is not static and is low traffic.
lcfcjs 6y ago
Github pages is pretty straightforward and free.
kissgyorgy 6y ago
For free, anywhere? GitHub, GitLab, Vercel, AWS S3... Even you watch can serve a decent amount of static pages/sec nowadays.
jokethrowaway 6y ago
For free non commercial projects, definitely netlify (they seem to imply the will remove commercial projects if they so like). If it's a commercial project I don't see the point of paying a premium for the nice UX, hosting static files is easy enough and I don't have investors' money to waste. I would spend my money on a CDN like BunnyCDN and throw a file server behind it.
trey-jones 6y ago
If you're looking for ease of deployment I think something like org-publish. But that would require some setup - anything would really.
- tomcam 6y ago
  How is org-publish a hosting solution? AFAIK it's a deployment command
NicoJuicy 6y ago
Has anyone tested out netlify vs cloudflare pages?
rabbitsfoot8 6y ago
I created https://tiiny.host https://tiiny.host - might be exactly what you're looking for. Command line tool coming soon!
fishtoaster 6y ago
A while back I wrote a tool* to make this as easy as possible for my use case: a single command to register the domain, jump through all the AWS hoops, and have a live static site with ssl at the end. I was pretty happy with it. These days, though, I just use netlify. It's not quite one command, but it's about heroku-level easy, and it gives you a lot of little niceties (autodeploy whenever you push a specific git branch to github, ssl, etc). * https://github.com/kkuchta/scarr https://github.com/kkuchta/scarr
_wldu 6y ago
Hugo, nearly free speech and a Makefile.
calderarrow 6y ago
Vercel. Sign in with Github, push and it's deployed. Probably the best Developer Experience I've ever had.
singhrac 6y ago
I've tried Github pages, Netlify, and Cloudflare Pages. Moved last night to the latter. Github pages is fine, but the extra gh-pages branch is kind of annoying. It's fairly clear (for obvious reasons) that they mainly think about Jekyll users, though I had a Hugo blog there for a while. Netlify sounds great, but in practice I ran into an annoying issue that I couldn't resolve where I had to rerun every automatic build. This probably isn't really their fault but the forums didn't work. Cloudflare Pages kind of just worked out of the box, and since I was already using it for my DNS, changing where the domain pointed took a few seconds. I'd suspect, if you corrected for how many issues were particular to me, I'd say Cloudflare Pages ~ Netlify > Github Pages. I'm kind of surprised the latter charges you for custom domains; I do have to say there's more documentation for Github than any of the others.
- florigator123 6y ago
  Haven't tried Netlify or Cloudfare pages, but I use GH pages for my personal blog (running Jekyll) and I've never seen any reason to switch. You need to know how to use Git and Github, but since you're reading HN you probably know these things. It's really convenient to be able to just push to GH and have it auto-deploy - and it's free. Granted, my blog is an insignifcant site with a tiny readership and I rarely update it, so if you need something more heavy duty than I have no idea if GH pages is up to the task.
- foobar33333 6y ago
  gitlab pages is better imo. You can use the CI to run any code you want to build the static files.
  - gala8y 6y ago
    Also, GitLab allows business websites in GitLab pages in free tier, as opposed to Netlify and Github. "With GitLab Pages, you can publish static websites directly from a repository in GitLab. Use for any personal or business website."
    - lostmsu 6y ago
ilaksh 6y ago
Check out https://gemlog.blue/ https://gemlog.blue/
pmlnr 6y ago
FTP-it to a friends' server.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  Seconded. I offered a container to many friends but very few actually take me up on the offer. Server communities are fun, why pay a stranger when you can build something with a friend?
_nhh 6y ago
Simple Webhosting. Cheap, reliable and unbreakable. Single command deployment with rsync. Plus you get serverless functionality for free with php scripts. Just place it in a folder and access it via browser. Magic.
jetpackjoe 6y ago
I user https://render.com https://render.com for my dynamic ($7/month) and static (free) sites. You specify a build command (ex. `npm run build`), and a directory (ex. `_site/`) and it will build and host it for you. It can automatically deploy on git events, or via web hook, or manually (button push). SSL/custom domains are also free and very easy to setup. I stan render.
- zokier 6y ago
  Is render like heroku for the dynamic stuff? Seems very similar offering
  - jetpackjoe 6y ago
    I find it simpler than Heroku. No buildpacks or database addons.
bronlund 6y ago
Check out https://render.com/ https://render.com/
tomduncalf 6y ago
surge.sh is quite nice, mainly because you just run the command from your “dist” directory, press enter a couple of times, and it’s uploaded. If you want a more CI type service (i.e. you push your code and it builds on the cloud, rather than you build it locally - or it requires no build), I’ve found Netlify pretty good. Was using Vercel for a Next.js project recently, quite nice experience but it randomly started timing out about 50% of builds and their support were unwilling to help without a minimal repro - fair enough, but I was on a deadline so switched to Netlify, which built the site with no issues. Will try out Cloudflare Pages next based on the positive comments in here!
stanislavb 6y ago
There's a list on SaaSHub tracking all the recommended/mentioned products here https://www.saashub.com/alternatives/post-news-ycombinator-2021-03-26-ask-hn-cheapest-easiest-way-to-host-a-static-site-56778 https://www.saashub.com/alternatives/post-news-ycombinator-2... however, I'm wondering why https://www.netlify.com/ https://www.netlify.com/ isn't listed... Please don't upvote or downvote this one. It's more like a "debugging" comment.
hokumguru 6y ago
Vercel is so great
greg5green 6y ago
I'd say Digital Ocean's newish Apps platform. Static sites are free and they can run a build step for you (still free).
- indigodaddy 6y ago
  Only 1G of transfer on the free tier though. That's fairly middling.
  - greg5green 6y ago
    I didn't see that when they launched -- wondering now if I'm blind or they added that caveat after the fact
- lioeters 6y ago
  For the curious, here's DigitalOcean's page describing the App Platform, including a breakdown of prices. https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/ https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/ "..Build and deploy 3 static sites for free."
jboynyc 6y ago
Take a look at sourcehut pages (srht.site) too.
quickthrower2 6y ago
When I did this I used netlify. However for my use case I now use cheap shared hosting and Wordpress, because the sheer amount of plugins to solve all kinds of problems is amazing. One of the built in themes I think 2019 is a nice starter for a modern site and with Gutenberg you can create a fairly modern responsive site out of the box. There is a plug-in for free that’ll backup the entire installation to your Google cloud and other clouds. There are cache and SEO plugins for free to sort that side of things out. Ive not used it but there is woo commerce for shopping although I wouldn’t blame someone for skipping it and using shopify for ease of use. I also love not battling with Hugo etc. at the technical level. I do not miss reading Hugo docs thinking wtf! Hosting for unlimited sites is costing me about $50 a year so pretty much zero.
tyingq 6y ago
Cloudflare pages. The only real limit on the free plan is "500 builds / month". Simple is relative, of course, but if you're a developer, you'll likely find it simple, and it does fit your "deploy with a single command" requirement. https://pages.cloudflare.com/ https://pages.cloudflare.com/ You can also tie it with the free plan for Cloudflare Workers if you have some need beyond static pages.
- indigodaddy 6y ago
  Cloudflare Pages will reload/redeploy on any git push right (just like Netlify?) ? Just want to be sure before I try it out..
  - tyingq 6y ago
    For Github, yes. For anything else, you would have to use their rancher tool and Cloudflare KV store. I imagine they have plans to support other providers, but aren't quite there yet.
    - indigodaddy 6y ago
      Seems like a great way to go, and if they implemented a Netlify CMS-like feature as well, that would really put it over the top as a unified one-stop shop for DNS/CDN/static site hosting + authoring built-in, and it also has Workers for any functions/dynamic pieces that might be needed.. all on Cloudflare's metal/edge. Sounds almost too good to be true..
      - tyingq 6y ago
        Some people aren't fans of the built-in protection and feel it's a bit overzealous in throwing up catpchas to certain visitors. No CMS feature. I do like it quite a lot.
ForHackernews 6y ago
My ISP gives me 10MB of free hosting with FTP access. Doesn't get much simpler than: ftp-upload -h myisp.net index.html
jdmg94 6y ago
Vercel is the way to go
jpxw 6y ago
S3 bucket with cloudfront in front. Route 53 for DNS. Not sure if it’s the cheapest way to do it, but it seems extremely cheap. Likewise not sure if it’s the easiest way to do it, but it seems easy now it’s set up - everything is in one place. IIRC Cloudfront <-> S3 data transfer has quite a generous free tier. The only thing I worry about is whether uploading objects is expensive, and invalidation. But it’s not been (noticeably) an issue so far.
bluishgreen 6y ago
Gatsby with Netlify
mobilio 6y ago
I'm using an AwardSpace [0] because they offer free hosting with PHP/MySQL and other features for free. Best is that they are over 15 years on market. For alternatives there is Firebase Hosting [1] that is also great since it's running on Google infrastructure. [0] https://www.awardspace.com https://www.awardspace.com [1] https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting
totaldude87 6y ago
I host a Wordpress site on hostinger, shared hosting costs under a buck per month for long term commitment . No free or cheap , doesn’t have much controls but can’t complain a lot either
every 6y ago
I use https://sdf.org https://sdf.org, but then my needs are very modest...
- wkoszek 6y ago
  Love to see projects like this still in existence. I sometimes wonder if I would get some users who could also share a box and keep it going for 30 years.
  - every 6y ago
    Slightly more than a box these days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF_Public_Access_Unix_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF_Public_Access_Unix_System
  - wkoszek 6y ago
    Mea culpa. It looks even more awesome now. I'm in -- and I think I'll send them a $1 via paper envelope now.
13415 6y ago
Raspberry Pi 4, if you live in a country where ISPs actually offer you Internet rather than just download access.
- waiseristy 6y ago
  This IMO is a bad bad bad idea. If you host PII on the site, any site you visit will be able to just ping your ip's port 80 and figure out who you are. This exact setup lead to the 2012 LinkedIn hack
adonese 6y ago
I use vercel (or previously zeit). The free plan suits my use cases: - tls - github integration (although limited to personal accounts only and NOT org -- which is nutsz but I understand the rationale) - it also comes with cloud functions, and routing which could be very powerful I think cloudflare pages with workers offer the same set of features PLUS team and github org integration, but so far I like what vercel is offering
huntermonk 6y ago
I use Site44. It's hosting synced to your Dropbox folder. Just edit your index.html locally and it's pushed when your Dropbox syncs.
ohitsdom 6y ago
I built my site with Vuepress, and it auto-deploys to Netlify once merged to master. PRs also have preview builds, and their builds are fast. Very easy setup, and free. Details here: https://fotijr.com/blog/2020/how-its-made/ https://fotijr.com/blog/2020/how-its-made/
stjo 6y ago
I did something similar for a kids coding camp in Bulgaria. It requires 0 technical knowledge, no registration and no captchas, but it is maybe a bit too tailored for their use case: https://bin.gamejs.online https://bin.gamejs.online I actually started it using myself, because it is so nice to just zip a folder and get it online in ~10 seconds.
attractivechaos 6y ago
It seems that no one mentioned SourceForge so far. I have used it for over a decade. You rsync your html to their htdocs and that is it.
Avalaxy 6y ago
You can use the Azure blob storage for static websites. Costs maybe 1 or 2 cents. I think you can even hang the free Azure CDN in front of it.
- kkielhofner 6y ago
  You certainly can, I just set that up myself this week.
tootie 6y ago
It's Netlify. Just point it at your git repo and give it a build command. It has CDN, DNS even lambdas. And deploy per branch. It's one-click setup from github.
datapolitical 6y ago
At least for Jekyll, GitHub Pages has been excellent.
messo 6y ago
Hosting a personal blog on old / cheap hardware at home and accepting some downtime now and then should be a trade-of worth making for most. An interconnected web of documents served from personal computers residing under a desk or in a basement – it is a beautiful thing. We nerds often seem to fall into the trap of over-engineering things, like, spending a lot of time building personal stuff that can scale into the infinity – only to end up never having more than 10 concurrent visitors at any given time. By accepting and embracing the intermittent and slightly unstable nature of serving websites from our homes, we can take back much of the in(ter)dependence and hacky, quirky fun that many of us fondly remember from the 90's and 2000's. Setting up a webserver on a Pi and serving it from home can be a fun project, not necessarily trivial for everyone, but definitely within reach for most technically inclined people. Might be among the cheapest, easiest AND fun ways to host a static site :)
- tdhttt 6y ago
  I am doing this and it's fun! The only hassles I had are a. setting up DDNS (since I don't have a static IP) and b. getting a certificate from Let's encrypt with only port 443 open (80 is blocked by my ISP). But other than that, it has been great! Hopefully my ISP won't have a problem with that ;)
  - jjacobson93 6y ago
    I just use a script on a cron that runs every 15 minutes and updates my DNS provider. And for let’s encrypt, I use the DNS verification method so you don’t have to even expose HTTP(S) ports if you don’t need to
    - dominikstr 6y ago
      I wrote a small go app[0] which is invoked every 15 minutes and updates the DNS through the cloudflare API. Its very specific for my use case and ISP but works well. [0] https://gitlab.com/dominikstraessle/homelab-dns https://gitlab.com/dominikstraessle/homelab-dns
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
Similar thread from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26556722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26556722
andrescordova 6y ago
AWS Amplify. Free for a year, doesn’t even need to be static.
malodyets 6y ago
I’ll second the use of GitLab pages - free hosting, free letsencrypt cert, only pay for your domain, very easy setup. Here’s my setup with Zola: https://seanharrison.org/postgrails/20200523-got-zola/ https://seanharrison.org/postgrails/20200523-got-zola/ A couple notes about setting up DNS since the gitlab instructions weren’t 100% clear to me: https://seanharrison.org/postgrails/20200720-gitlab-pages-dns-namecheap/ https://seanharrison.org/postgrails/20200720-gitlab-pages-dn...
- toastal 6y ago
  I can't say I'd second it -- at least not for anything outside of demos. You can't set custom headers which means you can set the recommended OWASP security headers and you'll get an F score on Mozilla Observatory. This will also not let you set proper caching headers which can mess with performance or just be incorrect like with service workers. A small additional nitpick is that you will need to do your own gzip and brotli compression instead of that being done by default (which is easy to forget about, but at least it gives you the flexibility to support Brotli and future formats like zstd whereas other providers you only get what they decide).
  - toastal 6y ago
    can't* set
Skhalar 6y ago
Firebase is stupid easy to host static sites on. I think it's like 2-4 cli commands. Only downside: it's Google.
baby 6y ago
Discovered netlify the other day and wow is it simple
imgabe 6y ago
I host my personal static site on a vps with nginx. It's a gatsby site so deployment is just yarn deploy, which runs gatsby build and rsyncs the build folder to the server. Granted, it took some setup to get there, but it's pretty easy now and portable too. Can easily be switched to any other service.
- Shared404 6y ago
  I also use a vps with nginx. I currently just sftp in to deploy, but it would be pretty easy to set up sshfs so you wouldn't even need to open a terminal if you didn't want to.
wbecher 6y ago
I'm using https://vercel.com/ https://vercel.com/ or https://www.netlify.com/ https://www.netlify.com/
tomjohnneill 6y ago
Having just had a site that went to the top of Hacker News and got a very sudden spike of traffic, I'd highly recommend Vercel. It's super quick to set up, and you can have a mix of static/dynamic content on the same site.
fabioyy 6y ago
geocities!! ops. sorry, wrong century
Atlas-Marbles 6y ago
After trying several options, I currently run a ghost.org instance locally in Docker where I edit my site. Then I run a tiny shell script to scrape a static version with wget and push it to Github pages.
bunsenhoneydew 6y ago
I’m using AWS Amplify Console and am very happy with it. All pay as you go so it’s super cheap. You can also hook into other AWS services if you want to start expanding capabilities.
axaxs 6y ago
I use a single vps from OVH. Something like 5 dollars a month.
superkuh 6y ago
That depends on what kind of static site it is. Is it for a business or making a business impression? Then I don't know. But if it's for personal use then the easiest is to simply install nginx from your repos on your home computer and put html and media files in directories. Then forward port 80 on your router to the IP of the computer. nginx serving static is not going to be a risk. It's extremely simple. And having everything on your local computer makes it easy to share and very fast to iterate.
kragen 6y ago
I use git push and that deploys my static site, which I think counts as "Heroku but even easier". For this to work, in the bare repo I push to, over ssh, the post-update hook automatically pulls into a non-bare repo: #!/bin/sh set -e echo -n 'updating... ' git update-server-info echo 'done. going to foo' cd /home/bar/public_html/absolute/path/of/a/non/bare/clone echo -n 'pulling... ' env -u GIT_DIR git pull echo -n 'updating... ' env -u GIT_DIR git update-server-info echo 'done.' You can use rsync too, but I think Git is substantially better for this kind of thing. Now of course this assumes that you already have a server machine somewhere, which you can ssh into, which is running a web server, and which is already in DNS. I've been in that situation for 26 years now, except that at first I used telnet. So I kind of take it for granted. It sounds like maybe you're looking for a way to not run your own web server process, instead sharing the burden with other people, like a PHP shared host from 15 years ago. If that's what you want, maybe you should share the server with a few friends? Like, two to eight? That way you don't have to give up the ability to solve whatever problems come up with the server.
Geee 6y ago
Try out Sia Skynet. You can upload with curl and it's very cheap. https://siasky.net https://siasky.net
giantg2 6y ago
Anybody using S3 static hosting? How does that compare to some of these others, specifically on price?
- imiric 6y ago
  I'm a happy Wasabi[1] customer. No egress fees, but to avoid abuse I put a caching proxy in front of it and it's cheap and low maintenance. Publishing is just uploading with standard S3 CLI tools. [1]: https://wasabi.com/ https://wasabi.com/
- hedora 6y ago
  I am, with cloudfront. It’s basically free (less than a domain name, for sure) for small sites. There’s some concern about paying a lot if someone ddos’s the page, since cloudfront is a few pennies per GB transferred to the internet.
shireboy 6y ago
Glitch.com is my go-to static site/tinker w nodejs container. Super easy, generous free sku. Put it behind cloudflare if you need.
hedora 6y ago
Which ones work with Tor (without captchas?)
rantwasp 6y ago
AWS S3 + Cloudfront. The initial setup can be a little finicky, but once you do get it setup, the rest of the time you only do an S3 sync from your local dir to the S3 bucket. It will also be stupid fast (cloudfront is edge networks) + have ssl + it will not go down if you ever see a surge in traffic. I have several of these and they work beautifully. As far as cost goes: 12$/domain per year + 0.5$/month for route53 zone + 0.2$/month for the actual traffic and hosting the content in S3. So it's under 2$/month for "enterprise grade"
- Ayesh 6y ago
  > So it's under 2$/month for "enterprise grade" Except that it isn't. Only the domain, and to some extend, the S3 costs are the "fixed" cost that you can even predict at first. A surge in traffic will surely increase the egress data, and that is easily $0.05-0.10 per GB. Cloudfront is one of the most expensive CDNs out there, and after 2-3 years of use, I came to realize how much I was wasting money on. CDNs often work quite flawlessly if you have a good cache busting mechanism, and I was paying a huge premium for what was essentially a set-once operation.
  - rantwasp 6y ago
    let’s talk numbers. how much egress traffic would you have? at 10GB per month you pay 0.8$/month yes the traffic it costs extra, but a static website should not be GB (or even MB) in size. Also, if you have a lot of traffic you should learn how to control the caching aspect. i would also challenge you to look at what egress traffic costs in other places.
    - danielheath 6y ago
      For $work I reduced our cloudfront egress bill by over $2000 / month by putting cloudflare in front of cloudfront. For a side project I likely wouldn't bother, but the pricing differential is really damn steep.
      - rantwasp 6y ago
mwarkentin 6y ago
AWS has Amplify Console which wraps up static site building, s3, cloudfront, custom domains, pull request previews, etc. If you’re already on AWS I’d recommend giving it a shot.
awslattery 6y ago
Firebase hosting or GCS bucket + Cloudflare page rule for cache-everything. Have used the cache-everything trick for client sites back in the day to serve a top 15 post on /r/all from a $5 Wordpress box. Man, I'm so glad to be out of that space...
ericls 6y ago
Firebase Hosting is actually very very easy to use and very "tranditional".
alfg 6y ago
I use GitHub pages for most of my project static websites using gh-pages [0] to deploy via a GitHub Action workflow. It's been working great for general static webpages, or using Vue/React. However, there are some limitations such as if you need to add custom headers. If you need more customization, then S3/Cloudfront also works well too. I also use Netlify and had minimal issues. [0] https://github.com/tschaub/gh-pages https://github.com/tschaub/gh-pages
chx 6y ago
I love https://blot.im/ https://blot.im/ if you have Dropbox, then there's no deploy. It's just there. You can also use git , of course.
dcchambers 6y ago
If all you really need is static web hosting there's several "good enough" or even "really good" free options these days, and many of them have insane reliability/uptime and can even build your site/blog for you. Many of them can be set up to deploy automatically when you commit to a repo. - GitHub Pages and Netlify are the two obvious and most popular choices, but there's also cloudflare, gitlab pages, hell even Keybase has static website hosting: https://book.keybase.io/sites https://book.keybase.io/sites
- RScholar 6y ago
  Yeah, I was going to recommend Keybase as well, despite still being extremely butt-hurt over the sale to Zoom and subsequent abandonment of continued development on it. While it has some limitations, it's hard to beat their combination of uptime, price, a built-in Markdown parser so you don't even have to muck around with Jekyll/Hugo/Pelican et al., as well as mobile apps that expose the files and directory structure for editing on the go. You can even map it to your own external domain.
jdsleppy 6y ago
Depending on how you measure cheapness and easiness, I made https://codasite.app https://codasite.app You type HTML and click "deploy." It's free.
omarish 6y ago
render.com
FractalHQ 6y ago
Vercel is my go-to.
Jamie9912 6y ago
Stay away from Github pages, my entire Github account got permanently suspended becuase I had a pornographic image on my Page. That's not allowed apparently. I'll stick with Cloudflare for now
cbanek 6y ago
Github pages is pretty easy if you don't need a custom name.
johnghanks 6y ago
Vercel has a free tier.
Animats 6y ago
I'm still on HostGator for my smaller sites. I have a DreamHost account, but it's a logger for something, not a publicly visible site.
kornesh 6y ago
Google Cloud Storage can host static sites and has a free forever tier
atmosx 6y ago
Github pages is almost free, supports SSL, simple as it gets, no need to buy a CNAME and your website might live for ever :-)
andrekorol 6y ago
https://fleek.co/ https://fleek.co/
peter_retief 6y ago
I have looked into this, I found that [vuepress] https://vuepress.vuejs.org/ https://vuepress.vuejs.org/ compiles into quite good looking static sites. As to the hosting I am using Google Firebase Hosting for a small static site which is free for the moment. I am in the process of setting up local hosting on my home fibre.
jwmoz 6y ago
Github pages, handsdown.
lacker 6y ago
For static sites, GitHub pages is extremely easy, if you're already using GitHub to host the code. You follow a few lines of code to stick a deploy script into your repository, point your domain, and you're done.
srg0 6y ago
I pay $3/month for a VPS. Probably not the cheapest way to host, and not the smallest vps offered, but I like that I can just ssh into it and do whatever I want, if/when I want something more than nginx, or I want to configure it in a very particular way (both things did happen). The drawback is that running apt upgrade is on me.
stevage 6y ago
I use site44. It's ridiculously easy. It's a front-end to Dropbox, so if you're already doing this, it's basically: Sign up, chose "mycrapsite.site44.com" cp -pr deployedsite/* ~/Dropbox/Apps/mycrapsite.site44.com Now your site is on the web. Nothing else is as easy as that. Super convenient for a lot of times when you just need a few files accessible via the web for some reason, too - no need to use any web interfaces, just copy on the command line, and done.
rosshemsley 6y ago
GitHub pages: You can use custom domains with SSL Here's a full example: https://github.com/rosshemsley/rosshemsley.co.uk https://github.com/rosshemsley/rosshemsley.co.uk
Tpt 6y ago
GitHub pages. It's free, you just have to push to a git repository to update it and it allows custom domain names.
benkoller 6y ago
In case someone finds it helpful, I created a terraform script to create all AWS resources to self-host a static site via S3 and Cloudfront: https://gist.github.com/benkoller/360019b4ad40d572bccc2875b4bfda1b https://gist.github.com/benkoller/360019b4ad40d572bccc2875b4... I've been using this for years at over a dozen different projects, I think it's a great way to host even commercial sites.
tezza 6y ago
i use Krystal web hosting (uk) £4.99 for basic account £9.99 unlimited subsite account (my choice) No need to run daemons or maintain packages or configure backups You can configure ssh access to put files To deploy I use lftp which takes ftp commands from stdin and can do a recursive mput very similar to rsync so I run my hand built deploy.pl which calls a subscript like this time ./scripts/push_to_cdn.pl | lftp
avipars 6y ago
github pages, gitlab pages, netlify free version
lukaszkups 6y ago
Github pages - free Basic FTP hosting starts from $10 per YEAR so it can be considered cheap as well - just create an subaccount that after login will be in the your page destination so it will be blazing fast to use with w.g. FTPzilla and just drag and drop your files each time you want to update.
stevewillows 6y ago
It's been suggested below, but Github Pages is a total breeze. Find a theme you like, clone the repo, add your domain (and set that stuff up) and get writing. If you go with Jekyll, it's really nice to work with. I decided to go with GHP over hosting myself in case I ever get super famous, which will most likely never happen. Ultimately, its easy enough that you can get writing right away. If you decide that the software isn't enough, it'll be a breeze to move somewhere else since its all markdown.
ukoms 6y ago
Encode html code as Base64, use link shortener, and viola - static page "hosted".
mro_name 6y ago
How much small print do you accept? How legally reliable do you want it? How much effort do you want to put in? Without smallprint it's either self-host on a raspi at home + some dyndns (cost near 0, larger initial effort) or EUR 2 per month for shared hosting (in germany).
viktorb 6y ago
Google App Engine, anyone? If you decide to move from static to something more complex, you have bunch of languages to choose from.
oakfr 6y ago
How about OVH with an rsync?
hivacruz 6y ago
I use Github Pages + Jekyll for a personal blog. I just started recently. The main problem I'm facing is the limited amount of plugins you can use with Github Pages. They have only whitelisted a few [1]. You can fix this issue by building the site locally and push the generated files but it feels less "proper" to me. There is also the cache policy problem (TTL of 10 minutes) but that's minor. [1]: https://pages.github.com/versions/ https://pages.github.com/versions/
- Black101 6y ago
  > You can fix this issue by building the site locally and push the generated files but it feels less "proper" to me. Why? Then you can build it locally and push it to multiple sites?
tyrex2017 6y ago
Hetzner Cloud gives you a full VM for 3 USD/month. I have hosted a game there with thousands of daily users.
tyrex2017 6y ago
strikingly.com is also nice for simple websites which you build with their editor; however not flexible to do custom things or uploads
dan_pixelflow 6y ago
It's a bit late, but https://pages.cloudflare.com https://pages.cloudflare.com - simple, quick, easy!
joe200 6y ago
Which of those you recommend allow me to password protect some (preview/staging) content both with list of custom users/passwords and integrated with some external SSO ?
priitmaxx 6y ago
Github
config_yml 6y ago
I use the Cloud Run free tier. I just build a tiny busybox image and serve the static pages via httpd. It‘s git push to Github to deploy. Obviously not a low tech solution, but was still fun to build.
rcarmo 6y ago
I’m just pushing out rendered HTML to Azure Storage fronted by CloudFlare (the Static Web Sites feature takes index.html and 404.html and just works). Rendering (which is custom and optimized for minimal delta updates) is done on a tiny VM that hosts other services, triggered by a GitHub hook.
cloudguy0 6y ago
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has an Always Free Tier that gives you 2 VMs that you can use to run your own custom setup. (https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/#always-free https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/#always-free) PS: I work at OCI
ldanicel 6y ago
https://fleek.co/ https://fleek.co/
r_singh 6y ago
I host a bunch of static websites created using Gatsby, Hugo and Mkdocs. The downright easiest and cheapest (free) platform I find is AWS Amplify Console. It's simply too good to be true (no affiliation). Connects with repos on all platforms (bitbucket, gitlab, GitHub). Push to deploy. Most of my sites are still on the free tier. If you manage your DNS with Route53, you don't even have to configure subdomains anymore, every new site's domain is automatically configured with a click.
podiki 6y ago
Question for these recommendations: what type of visitor stats or analytics do they provide by default? If you are using a static site without embedding some analytics, what can they show you (e.g. just overall bandwidth, number of unique visitors, etc.)? I know Netlify just has on their free tier bandwidth per month, last I checked.
dusted 6y ago
ask your isp for a static ip address, attach a rasperry pi to your home network, forward port 80 and, if you're fancy, port 443 to the IP of said raspberry pi. Install a webserver (like lighttpd) buy a domain name with DNS hosting, add an A record for your domain to point to previously mentioned static IP. Was next to free in 1999, still is.
- burundi_coffee 6y ago
  In my country ISPs only give static IPs to business customers. Plans for business customers are 5-10 times more expensive than regular plans.
  - dusted 6y ago
    thats insane, i pay an additional fee of about $5 for it
obfk 6y ago
git push origin gh-pages
maxyurk 6y ago
In the past I compared downtime between github pages, firebase and gitlab using pingdome. Firebase had the most downtime, then github. Gitlab had zero downtime for months. Not sure it's the simplest but it was simple enough. Included Let's encrypt TLS out of the box and free support of custom domain name. Plus I configured auto deploy after each master commit with gitlab ci.
poushkar 6y ago
Over the years, I've tried it all. Currently hosting my blog (nywkap.com) on AWS S3. It's cheap and fast but the overhead is still annoying. I don't find it interesting or technically challenging to go through the bumps of re-generating/re-deploying/cleaning CDN caches, etc. Also, publishing from a smartphone is either too hard or even impossible. [self-promotion] After some frustration, I actually started working on a blogging platform that combines the speed of static site generators with the comfort of hosted solutions, all while making sure you own the data in a sane format. And also a personal preference - it must be as green as possible. Check it out: https://zeroms.blog/ https://zeroms.blog/ I should have the MVP ready next month.
phaze111 6y ago
Try with atomhosting
JoHawth31 6y ago
If you don’t mind the code being public, GitHub pages is free and a fantastic resource. I think you can also upgrade to a paid version to make the code private. Check it out here: https://pages.github.com/ https://pages.github.com/
anonu 6y ago
I use docsify with github pages. This allows you to edit in markdown. Github basically gives you a free IDE. There's no need to compile as markdown is converted to html on the client side. https://docsify.js.org/#/ https://docsify.js.org/#/
mellowhype 6y ago
GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel (former ZEIT) and the non-official winner: surge.sh, the absolute simplest way to publish a static website.
everlost 6y ago
I started using Firebase hosting for side projects. Easy to setup, deploy and free for up to 360MB/day. https://firebase.google.com/pricing https://firebase.google.com/pricing
rja907 6y ago
Set up a github repo. Buy a domain. Add a CNAME file that has the domain in caps. Deploy github repo to github pages. Go to your domain and see the magic.

Sodman 6y ago

I see the "GitHub Pages" suggested a lot whenever this question comes up, but it's worth noting that it's against their ToS[0] to use it for commercial purposes: "GitHub Pages is not intended for or allowed to be used as a free web hosting service to run your online business, e-commerce site, or any other website that is primarily directed at either facilitating commercial transactions or providing commercial software as a service (SaaS)." So it's great if you want to host a personal site / blog or some other non-revenue-generating website, but for anything more than that you could run into issues. [0] https://docs.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-pages/about-github-pages#guidelines-for-using-github-pages https://docs.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-pages/...

serial_dev 6y ago
Anyone got issues with this? In my opinion, there are some cases where it is a gray area: professional portfolio, case studies website with an email collection form, blog posts where you mention that you are a freelancer, a site where you link to your YouTube videos, some simple JavaScript app that don't require a backend but might make some money with ads... So I'm just wondering how often they strike down at people who operate in this gray area.
- bombcar 6y ago
  I suspect it’s more a “don’t yell at us if your business site is down because you don’t know what you’re doing”. The SaaS part might have more teeth.
offtop5 6y ago
That's a great point. I actually looked at GitHub pages and my main issue with it is there's no way to password lock the site. I don't need serious security here, but I also don't exactly want the entire world to see my HTML playground. I'm not sure why they're doing it this way, it should be a nominal task to restrict viewers to those with read access to your repo, but I think it underscores the use cases they have in mind here. They want you to use it as a blog and not as a serious web hosting solution.
- stevage 6y ago
  > it should be a nominal task to restrict viewers to those with read access to your repo I don't think it would be quite that trivial. They would have to inject authentication into your HTML, which could cause lots of things to break.
  - offtop5 6y ago
    They offer it for Github enterprise .
mro_name 6y ago
Even for private stuff you're under dictation of a 3rd party that decides what you're allowed to say to whom and who eavesdrops. US was once famous how they valued free speech. Tempi passati.

ignoramous 6y ago

I use both pages.dev and netlify.com: pages.dev, even in open beta, is a fantastic product if it suits all your needs, but the limitations [0], if you hit them, are a dead-end and there are no ETAs as to when some of those limitations would be addressed. That is not the case with netlify.com which boasts a myriad of features, is equally as fast, production-ready, and competitively priced. With pages.dev, I believe, you pay per every domain you host, whilst with netlify.com, there's no cap on number of domains per account, though they do charge for bandwidth (unlike pages.dev). Workers Sites [1] is a viable alternative and I quite prefer it over pages.dev. [0] https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits [1] https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/platform/sites https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/platform/sites

benatkin 6y ago
How do you know that Netlify is production ready? I found Netlify Identity to not be production ready* and now I'm not so sure about the rest of the platform. * Three reasons. 1) The identity widget has people setting it up in such a way that tokens aren't refreshed and logins last only an hour. https://github.com/netlify/netlify-identity-widget/issues/117 https://github.com/netlify/netlify-identity-widget/issues/11... 2) Netlify Identity keeps bumping me out despite having gone out of my way to get it configured properly. I don't know why but the issue has lasted for weeks. 3) In development mode, the token can't be verified without making a request to Netlify Functions, and the suggested path (in Redwood.js at least) is to just parse the JWT without verifying it.
- ignoramous 6y ago
  > How do you know that Netlify is production ready? I meant in a way that pages.dev is in "open beta" and netlify.com don't market themselves as such. Besides, in my personal experience, I never hit any issue with netlify that didn't have a solution.
no_wizard 6y ago
There is a strong chance that when Pages comes out of beta, Worker Sites is going to be transitioned into Pages, at least thats kind of how I feel about some of the verbiage on this page: https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/migrations/migrating-from-workers https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/migrations/migrating...
- kmf 6y ago
  hey, kristian from the workers team here - i wrote these docs, so this is good feedback :) we don't have any plans to get rid of workers sites! but we do think that for most people deploying static sites, pages is a better fit than workers sites. when we do talk about the future of pages versus workers sites, we're generally talking about making it easier to deploy serverless functions /with/ your pages sites - providing better tooling and DX around that is a super high priority for us. the interplay between workers serverless functions and static asset serving via workers sites is still a really strong use case (and IMO a thing that workers is uniquely capable of doing) that we don't have any plans to shelf. again, i wrote the docs here so this is on me if it came across as "we're getting rid of workers sites" - i'll take a shot at improving these docs and helping clarify that next week!
kmf 6y ago
> With pages.dev, I believe, you pay per every domain you host nope, we do unlimited sites on pages! here's the free plan [1]: > 1 build at a time > 500 builds per month > Unlimited sites > Unlimited requests > Unlimited bandwidth you can upgrade to the pro ($20/mo) or business ($200/mo) plans for more concurrent builds and builds per month. still not priced per domain or site! [1]: https://pages.cloudflare.com/#pricing https://pages.cloudflare.com/#pricing
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Hey, do you plan to support Gitlab repos? I'd love to use pages but I can't because my repos are on Gitlab.
  - rita3ko 6y ago
    hi there! cloudflare pages pm here :) we certainly plan to (nothing against gitlab!!), likely in the next couple months. my email is rita at cloudflare. happy to keep you posted
- ignoramous 6y ago
  Thanks. > ...still not priced per domain or site! It was my understanding that I had to upgrade each domain to "pro" with $20/month (say, if I wanted pro features like web-analytics on each). Is that not the case? On netlify.com, "pro" is $19/month per account (not per domain).

jacobp100 6y ago

I actually just went the other way. I found CF is a bit too aggressive with anti-DDOS measures, and the page would not work sometimes in Safari with default settings. The default setup for GH Pages is not great. Jekyll is very dated. But if you use GH Actions, you can build yourself a pretty great setup. My site is open source at https://github.com/jacobp100/jacob-does-code https://github.com/jacobp100/jacob-does-code - there's also a blog post about how the build system works.

londons_explore 6y ago
Usually when I need static site hosting, I don't want to build myself a great setup - I want to click a few buttons and have a great setup. Third party free hosting excels at the ability to do a start to finish page in inside an hour. I want to spend 55 minutes of that hour writing the text, not fiddling with oddities of how to make GitHub actions show me the parse errors of my markdown...
bombcar 6y ago
Safari + IPv6 = find out a lot about crosswalks and stoplights.
sedachv 6y ago
> I found CF is a bit too aggressive with anti-DDOS measures As someone who does a lot of browsing with unpopular web browsers, Cloudflare is basically a way to ensure that it is a coin toss as to whether or not I will see your site; it is not the worst CDN/DoS protection racket service out there though. I would like to see how much legitimate traffic Cloudflare or the others block, and how much website operators are spending on that "service."
- Jamie9912 6y ago
  This is something that is configurable though. If you leave your Firewall security mode to default, then yes it will block IPs with bad rep. If I don't care about anti-ddos, I just set the Firewall security to Low, and create a Firewall rule to allow everything from 0.0.0.0/0, simple as that.
  - sedachv 6y ago
    Good to know that about Cloudflare. Believe it or not, there is at least one DoS protection provider/Web Application Firewall service/whatever you want to call it, that seems to default to asking you to solve captchas to view web pages.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  Is there a good alternative, particularly one that does not impose their own moderation/censorship regime? After Cloudflare decided to abandon content neutrality (https://reclaimthenet.org/cloudflare-suspends-8chan/ https://reclaimthenet.org/cloudflare-suspends-8chan/) I really don’t want anything to do with them. Or are there reasonable software or hardware options to protect one’s own servers directly without relying on a third party service?
dhosek 6y ago
I had cloudflare set up on a mediawiki site until last year when for some reason I disabled it and discovered that a lot of issues I'd had accessing the site in Safari went away (like it not letting me login except in private browsing).

singhrac 6y ago

I should warn that bike shedding about this distinction is absolutely not worth your time if you’re reading this and have less than like 100 blog posts written or are running a business on these sites (in which case I think you should pick Netlify). Go write something.

ipaddr 6y ago
Now you have something to write about.
- ric2b 6y ago
  Yup, it's almost a joke at this point, that the first post on a technical blog is usually about how they build their static blog.
qbasic_forever 6y ago
And also, who cares it's a static host and you can change to another one in an afternoon. There's zero lock-in when you're only rsyncing some files around. Just make sure you have total control over your DNS (buy a domain, put it on a good DNS host) and you really can't screw things up too badly.
- jefftime 6y ago
  Who would you consider good DNS hosts? I'm looking at setting up a static site and am new to the whole process
  - miloignis 6y ago
    Gandi.net is my favorite - their motto is "No BS" and I've found that to be true.
    - mssundaram 6y ago
      I've used Gandi.net for the past 18 years and can agree
      - vbsteven 6y ago
        Another happy Gandi.net user here. Although some domains I point to cloudflare nameservers if I need some of their features.
    - kvz 6y ago
      Used to be a happy Gandi customer but disagree. They ditched their no BS slogan, lost TBs of customer data and made inappropriate remarks about that on social media https://techmonitor.ai/techonology/cloud/gandi-outage-hardware-failure https://techmonitor.ai/techonology/cloud/gandi-outage-hardwa..., and the upgrade to a new customer portal has been nothing but messy and painful. Happy to no longer be a customer now
  - qbasic_forever 6y ago
    I've been super happy with Namecheap, but I only use them for the most basic stuff like A records, CNAME, etc. They don't have an easy to use API (IIRC you have jump through a lot of hoops and whitelist your IP to get access) which is both a good and bad thing. It's good security because APIs are just another way to gain access to your stuff, and an attacker controlling your DNS has _incredible_ access to ruin your life (steal email, impersonate you... the works). It's bad though because increasingly we're automating certificates and other stuff through means of using DNS as proof (i.e. set a magic TXT record and lets encrypt will grant you a wildcard SSL cert for free) and many scripts need a DNS provider with good API. So long way of saying for basic stuff where it's just you going into a dashboard and clicking around to change settings--Namecheap is great. Their DNS comes free with purchase of a domain for a couple bucks, you really can't beat that price. If you need programmatic API access step up to someone who is running DNS as a core part of their business IMHO--Amazon Route 53, Cloudflare, etc. The bigger the better as they'll have more security resources, support good security practices like 2FA, hardware auth devices, etc. and just generally have more care taken with access to DNS. You'll pay more but you'll get more in the long run.
  - lukevp 6y ago
    CloudFlare can be used for dns registration and management as well as ddos protection, ssl cert issuance, origin hiding, static hosting, edge computing, and more, all in the free tier. If you use something like namecheap, you may find the dns resolvers aren’t super great - eg. Changing a record may take 30 mins to propagate because they use higher TTLs by default, whereas CloudFlare’s anycast dns network usually propagates a DNS change where its testable on any network within 60 seconds. The downside of using CloudFlare for both your registrar and operationally is if they ever have an outage at the registrar tier you won’t be able to route to new nameservers. If you’re worried about that you can buy your domain through someone else but point at CloudFlare’s nameservers.

thitcanh 6y ago

Basically everything you wrote about GitHub Pages is wrong. GitHub Pages is static hosting. If you don’t need Jekyll, don’t use it. There’s nothing special about it. GitHub Pages does NOT charge for custom domains. You can configure any branch for GitHub Pages, or even just the /docs folder on the main branch.

qbasic_forever 6y ago
Just as a clarification, much of what you mention has only changed in the last year or so. For a very long time gh-pages branch and Jekyll were assumed (you couldn't even use plugins with Jekyll). Custom domains weren't free. SSL wasn't free. Github is doing great stuff but it has taken time to evolve into the all free all you can eat buffet you see today.
- hellojason 6y ago
  I have to agree with parent. I've had a custom domain without Jekyll on GitHub pages for well over 5 years now, and it's been free the entire time.
  - heyoni 6y ago
    Same here. Not sure where they’re getting that from. Possibly region specific?
    - singhrac 6y ago
      I replied upthread, but I made a mistake reading https://docs.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-pages/about-custom-domains-and-github-pages https://docs.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-pages/... when revisiting what I remembered, and I was just looking at it from the perspective of private repos. My bad!
      - hellojason 6y ago
        Oh right, good point. The repo had to be public until very recently.
- villgax 6y ago
  Get your facts straight, they have had custom domains for a looong time & there was absolutely no need for Jekyll either at any point to host a page, it just happened to be one the most documented/blogged about way to use GitHub pages with automatic builds instead of having static content.
  - brandly 6y ago
    Free SSL for custom domains happened a few years ago: https://github.blog/2018-05-01-github-pages-custom-domains-https/ https://github.blog/2018-05-01-github-pages-custom-domains-h...
    - villgax 6y ago
      That's almost 3 years ago, thread OP said an year or so
- stevage 6y ago
  Much more than a year, maybe 2-3 years.
singhrac 6y ago
I think we've both said correct things, but I think you've missed my meaning: yes, I understand that Github Pages is static hosting, I was point out that by default the build system uses Jekyll. This is nonobvious. This is in the docs: "GitHub Pages will use Jekyll to build your site by default. If you want to use a static site generator other than Jekyll, disable the Jekyll build process by creating an empty file called .nojekyll in the root of your publishing source, then follow your static site generator's instructions to build your site locally." (https://docs.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-pages/about-github-pages#static-site-generators https://docs.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-pages/...). Netlify and CF will both run some other static site generators (e.g. Hugo in my case) for you, while Github Pages will run Jekyll (or you can build locally). And yes, custom domains are free for public repos. I made a mistake reading the page about custom domains, which mentioned that private repos need a Github Pro account. You're also right about configuring any branch.
- stevage 6y ago
  I don't use Jekyll and I have never set up a .nojekyll file. I don't know what that is meant to do, but you can deploy whatever you want and it will work just fine. Maybe you need that file on the rare offchance that you're deploying a site that contains something that looks like a Jekyll config, but you don't want it to be built that way.
  - tomerv 6y ago
    Yes, that's exactly the issue. I don't remember the exact file name, maybe it was a directory named "static". The behavior was not as expected, and only a Google search helped me figure out why files were disappearing.

chriswarbo 6y ago

> I, as a brown immigrant, get to criticize my home country all I want. Countries are not people, so criticism of a country cannot be racist (it's a category error). Criticism of people of a country could be racist, but that's a different thing. Criticism of the government/establishment of a country could be racist, but again that's a different thing. Unfortunately these three separate things often get conflated and mixed up.

tasogare 6y ago
> countries are not people, so criticism of a country cannot be racist Then how do you explain those reactions? [1] "I'm sorry, but there's no other word one can use but racist". GP is totally right, nowadays any remote criticism -- and I'm speaking of the factual ones, not the injurious kind mentioned before -- of a foreign country (except China, Russia and NK for some reason) by white people is labeled racist. And of course, people of color are allowed to speak anything they want against European countries, and spread hate speech mostly without any issue (granted one rapper is condamned from time to time... for instance Nick Conrad after singing "hang the whites" [2]). [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/12/politics/trump-shithole-countries-reaction-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/12/politics/trump-shithole-c... [2] https://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/ces-rappeurs-qui-defrayent-la-chronique-judiciaire-18-09-2020-8387397.php https://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/ces-rappeurs-qui-defr...
- rovr138 6y ago
  A bit of context, > "I'm sorry, but there's no other word one can use but racist," Colville said, responding to reporters at a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland. "You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as 'shitholes' whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome." You missed that second part. Looks like they’re talking about dismissing the people of those countries just because they are from, what they consider, a ‘shithole’ country/continent.
- chriswarbo 6y ago
  I did not specify who was conflating/mixing-up these distinct topics, or for what purpose. Racists often conflate countries/governments/populations, which is what Trump did with his "shithole countries" comments. He was referring to the people of those countries, i.e. the pool which immigrants would be members of (or, in his delusional mind, "sent by"). Note that if a country itself were a 'shithole', say for example a war-torn region like Yemen or Syria, that would only help the case for immigrants from that country; since the place they're fleeing is so bad. > GP is totally right, nowadays any remote criticism -- and I'm speaking of the factual ones, not the injurious kind mentioned before -- of a foreign country (except China, Russia and NK for some reason) by white people is labeled racist. Citations and examples please (also for the China/Russia/NK criticism; I suspect you're also conflating criticism-of-government/people with criticism-of-country) > And of course, people of color are allowed to speak anything they want against European countries What complete and utter total bollocks. Have you never encountered the thought-terminating cliche of "if you don't like it then leave", or its more overtly-racist cousin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_back_to_where_you_came_from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_back_to_where_you_came_from ? > and spread hate speech mostly without any issue I find this use of the word "mostly" to be mostly questionable.
cmeacham98 6y ago
> Countries are not people, so criticism of a country cannot be racist (it's a category error). Technically true, but practically useless. What is a country other than a group of people? Almost all criticism of a country will inevitably be about people in it or their actions - with very few exceptions (ex. complaints about the geography, weather, etc).
- acdha 6y ago
  It’s far from useless and even a cursory review will find many examples of criticism which says things about the people of a country being mislead, poorly served, etc. which is different from racist claims that they are innately disposed to be that way. The key part is acknowledging the fundamental humanity of the people you’re talking about – they may make choices we dislike but that’s a decision, not genetics. For example, I grew up in California and heard a lot about Mexico’s problems — some people would repeat racist claims about Mexicans being lazy (despite them universally hiring undocumented workers for cheap labor) or dishonest, but others would correctly identify problems like corruption being due to things like the huge amounts of money from the U.S. drug trade ensuring that cartels regularly killed off non-corrupt officials, where the system didn’t work well for most people who didn’t have a choice and everyone involved having acting on the options available to them rather than some innate determinism or moral weakness.
- chriswarbo 6y ago
  > What is a country other than a group of people? Which group of people? The population? The government? These can be very different (just ask Myanmar)

austinjp 6y ago

You raise a point that seems to come up increasingly frequently, and it's a good one because it highlights some complexities in the issues. I don't think you're entirely wrong, but I don't believe you're entirely "correct" either :) Some brown people can be racist, including towards other brown people, and including those of the same heritage. (I'm not saying that you are.) Some subset of comments by racists may be categorically true. For example, a racist might decry the appalling rapes and murders that have been reported from India, saying violence towards women in India is a serious and pressing issue. Isolated statements don't necessarily reveal motivations or underpinning beliefs. A blog post might report "truth", but that might be selective, framed and phrased in certain ways, and so on. So a hosting service necessarily needs to make a judgement call regarding acceptable content, and sometimes this will require looking beyond the content itself to discern motivations. The motivations of a writer or broadcaster are key. If someone is writing about corruption and endemic violence in a foreign land, why are they doing this? Is it to call attention to the issue so it might be addressed and fixed? Or is it to build a wall? For what it's worth, I doubt NFS would ban you from writing about the issues you've raised, provided they were constructive. Yes, that's a judgement call, and I think that's inevitable. The issue of white allies (or cis-gendered, or whatever other area is concerned) is tricky, and frankly I think society is going through adolescence with this. Lots of outrage, lots of polarisation, and this is a shame and unhelpful. I agree that rejection of your allies by authorities that haven't attempted to understand the details is actively undermining, even if it's done with apparently good intentions. Personally, I think this sort of thing happens through fear of attracting outrage, misunderstanding the problem, wanting a simple answer to complex problems, pressure to act quickly and show decisiveness, and so on. Unfortunately this stuff is complicated and complex, and requires care and attention. Personally I feel that the underpinning issues here are driven by polarisation, and this is what needs to addressed. Anyone who's writing to encourage collaborative solutions to grievous problems is unlikely to be banned by any hosting provider worth its salt. The sort of provider banning such content isn't contributing to a happier world, so should be avoided.