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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 re

by 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.
yojo 6y ago
I also used/loved NFSN, but I have a habit of neglecting pages for years. I have had more than one site go dark for months before I realized they’d run out of budget. Now I use GH pages so I don’t have to think about it. If you’re actively updating (or just better organized), NFSN is a good choice
- RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
  For the record, they do have support for email warnings when your balance drops below various thresholds- it's right on the account dashboard.
- burlesona 6y ago
  I came to post the same. NFS does have some email alerts, but if you leave something on NFS and then forget to add funds you may lose it. That happened to me, and I decided never to use them again, because at the end of the day I’d much rather have infrastructure bill me and stay online than require pre-payment and die when the funds run out. But if you’re sure you’ll never forget to top off your account balance, NFS is okay.
  - hamburglar 6y ago
    I’m pretty bad at keeping on top of that sort of thing, and their email alerts have kept me on top of it for close to 20 years now. I set email alerts at $5 and at $1 remaining and I almost always ignore the $5 one. I think I’ve gotten the dreaded “your account is out of funds” emails three or four times in that time, and I can have it back to running with a few clicks. I’m pretty darn lazy but I think their system is wonderful. No out-of-sight auto-pay that creeps up in cost, but still relatively easy to manage.
Lammy 6y ago
NSFN are also a great registrar for those who host elsewhere. I found them way back when GoDaddy was in the news for pulling domains at News Corp's behest when I decided I wanted a registrar that wouldn't do that :) https://mashable.com/2007/01/25/myspace-godaddy/ https://mashable.com/2007/01/25/myspace-godaddy/
livinginfear 6y ago
I have used nfshost for hosting multiple sites for over a decade. They're a fantastic service that's simple, secure, and provides great, fast support. They recently published this blog post: https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2021/01/19/free-speech-in-2021/ https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2021/01/19/free-speech-in-... After reading this, I made the decision to move my hosting elsewhere. I have never hosted content that is even remotely political, and have no intention to do so. I had chosen to patron nearlyfreespeech based upon the belief that their conception of 'freedom of speech' matched my own. I believe 'freedom of speech' is not just a convenient vehicle for expressing my own political ideas, it is an important political idea in and of itself. I believe that the freedom for individuals to express their ideas without censorship is integral to a free and intelligent society. This post of theirs demonstrates that I had clearly misunderstood their beliefs. It's clear that 'freedom of speech' is a controversial notion in today's society. If they market their service based upon their respect for so-called freedom of speech (it's in their name), I don't know what kind of crowd they expect to come. I came not out of a need, but based upon my political views. I imagine I'm a minority. I'm not interested in a host that markets itself in such a way, and then demonstrates that what they _really_ meant was that they want an environment where you're free to agree with their views.
- busymom0 6y ago
  That blog post was why I decided to not use them too. Specifically their line about > "and we have no interest in living in a sea of mayonnaise." What is that even supposed to mean?? Who refers to people as "mayonnaise"?? While claiming to be against racism??
  - ulucs 6y ago
    >Who refers to people as "mayonnaise"?? Racist people I'd guess
  - cauthon 6y ago
    I read it as a succinct and derisive dismissal of white supremacist beliefs, particularly racial purity.
herodoturtle 6y ago
Another happy long time user of NFS here. Just thought I'd chime in to add my 2 cents, on the off chance that it helps someone here make an informed decision. NFS is also great for small MySQL backed sites - for example your Wordpress blog or something similar. Their pricing model is so transparent and predictable, and the support from Jeff and co is great (their documentation and FAQ is simply brilliant). Also their domain registration and setup is a breeze - and they have great Whois privacy support. These guys were doing pay-as-you-use pricing long before AWS came along. We still use (and love) AWS for our extensive production systems, but for simple hosting of smaller projects and / or personal websites, NFS is unbeatable. Its combination of affordability and ease of use is simply the best.
- hamburglar 6y ago
  They’re also quite on the ball with system monitoring. I remember once about 15 years ago when I decided to see if I was able to ssh tunnel a socks proxy through their shell machine (I was curious what would happen) and they had my account suspended within minutes. :D Great job, guys (sincerely). Took me promising never to do it again to get reinstated.
pronoiac 6y ago
I'm pretty fond of them, but their service charges for support gradually add up if you have many sites there. I'm moving some items to a $5 VPS.
- newscracker 6y ago
  Have you looked at using the per-alias document root feature? Depending on your needs, you could host multiple domains and "sites" on one NSFN site using this feature. This makes all of them share certain things and doesn't allow the amount of resilience that separate NSFN sites would allow, but it's an easy way to reduce your costs if your needs aren't very demanding.
throwawaysea 6y ago
Does this service live up to their name? Are they for free speech principles or do they have their own content moderation policies that go above the legal minimums?
- busymom0 6y ago
  You be the judge based on this blog post: https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2021/01/19/free-speech-in-2021/ https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2021/01/19/free-speech-in-... Imo, answer is no. Any site which uses terms like "sea of mayonnaise" to describe people while claiming to be against racism is giving lip service and lacks self awareness.
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    Wow that is a really disappointing blog post, both for showing they aren’t content neutral and because of its unprofessional tone. Thanks, there have to be better options out there.
johnx123-up 6y ago
> 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 How do you handle it?
- zck 6y ago
  In the .htaccess: RewriteEngine on RewriteCond ${REQUEST_FILENAME} !-D RewriteRule "^((?:.*/)*[^/.]+)$" "$1.html" [NC]
  - johnx123-up 6y ago
    Thank you
  - hunter2_ 6y ago
    Any reason not to just use Options MultiViews instead?
    - zck 6y ago
      Mainly because I did not know that existed. I'll have to test it before thinking about switching it out. I wonder if there's some sort of unit test suite for .htaccess configurations -- big changes like this could definitely break something, and my config works for me now. It does seem like it might be more magic than I prefer in programming, though.
Ciantic 6y ago
From NFS site: > Currently we are not tracking (and hence not billing for) extra bandwidth usage. This is subject to change at any time. What do you do if your small static site gets suddenly HN audience? Do you then pay thousands for the bandwidth? For simple static sites, I always look at the egress rates and bandwidth caps. For example if you have Wasabi+Cloudflare, then you know the pricing before hand. Wasabi doesn't have egress fees even if Cloudflare were to redirect all traffic for a while to your files.
- polm23 6y ago
  Having been on the HN frontpage several times with my small static site, it doesn't even show up in my monthly billing reports. The main fluctuation is for when I renew domains.
- hamburglar 6y ago
  They say in their FAQ that a typical slashdot/reddit surge costs a typical site under $10. If you keep a $20 buffer you're probably fine, and the worst case is you burn through that and the site shuts off until you put more in.
DarrenDev 6y ago
I've used NFSN for hosting almost-zero traffic static sites for years. But, if it's the cheapest host you're after they're not it. The pay as you go model they use can mislead you into assuming they cost pennies because you pay small amounts each time, but with a half a dozen sites hosted you can expect to get hit by top up warnings a few times a year. I've just double checked my email receipts, and I had to top up $60 in 2020 just to keep those static zero-traffic sites up and running. Standard, bare bones, shared Linux/MySQL hosting anywhere else will rarely set you back more than $40-$50 a year. There's really no commercial reason to choose NFSN.
- polm23 6y ago
  Is saving $10 over a year worth the time it took you to do the math on that?
polm23 6y ago
I've been using NFSN for over ten years. Most of my sites with them are static, and it's great that when I'm on the front page of HN I never have to worry about anything, it's just business as usual.

by zck 6y ago

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.

yojo 6y ago

I also used/loved NFSN, but I have a habit of neglecting pages for years. I have had more than one site go dark for months before I realized they’d run out of budget. Now I use GH pages so I don’t have to think about it. If you’re actively updating (or just better organized), NFSN is a good choice

RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
For the record, they do have support for email warnings when your balance drops below various thresholds- it's right on the account dashboard.
burlesona 6y ago
I came to post the same. NFS does have some email alerts, but if you leave something on NFS and then forget to add funds you may lose it. That happened to me, and I decided never to use them again, because at the end of the day I’d much rather have infrastructure bill me and stay online than require pre-payment and die when the funds run out. But if you’re sure you’ll never forget to top off your account balance, NFS is okay.
- hamburglar 6y ago
  I’m pretty bad at keeping on top of that sort of thing, and their email alerts have kept me on top of it for close to 20 years now. I set email alerts at $5 and at $1 remaining and I almost always ignore the $5 one. I think I’ve gotten the dreaded “your account is out of funds” emails three or four times in that time, and I can have it back to running with a few clicks. I’m pretty darn lazy but I think their system is wonderful. No out-of-sight auto-pay that creeps up in cost, but still relatively easy to manage.

Lammy 6y ago

NSFN are also a great registrar for those who host elsewhere. I found them way back when GoDaddy was in the news for pulling domains at News Corp's behest when I decided I wanted a registrar that wouldn't do that :) https://mashable.com/2007/01/25/myspace-godaddy/ https://mashable.com/2007/01/25/myspace-godaddy/

livinginfear 6y ago

I have used nfshost for hosting multiple sites for over a decade. They're a fantastic service that's simple, secure, and provides great, fast support. They recently published this blog post: https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2021/01/19/free-speech-in-2021/ https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2021/01/19/free-speech-in-... After reading this, I made the decision to move my hosting elsewhere. I have never hosted content that is even remotely political, and have no intention to do so. I had chosen to patron nearlyfreespeech based upon the belief that their conception of 'freedom of speech' matched my own. I believe 'freedom of speech' is not just a convenient vehicle for expressing my own political ideas, it is an important political idea in and of itself. I believe that the freedom for individuals to express their ideas without censorship is integral to a free and intelligent society. This post of theirs demonstrates that I had clearly misunderstood their beliefs. It's clear that 'freedom of speech' is a controversial notion in today's society. If they market their service based upon their respect for so-called freedom of speech (it's in their name), I don't know what kind of crowd they expect to come. I came not out of a need, but based upon my political views. I imagine I'm a minority. I'm not interested in a host that markets itself in such a way, and then demonstrates that what they _really_ meant was that they want an environment where you're free to agree with their views.

busymom0 6y ago
That blog post was why I decided to not use them too. Specifically their line about > "and we have no interest in living in a sea of mayonnaise." What is that even supposed to mean?? Who refers to people as "mayonnaise"?? While claiming to be against racism??
- ulucs 6y ago
  >Who refers to people as "mayonnaise"?? Racist people I'd guess
- cauthon 6y ago
  I read it as a succinct and derisive dismissal of white supremacist beliefs, particularly racial purity.

herodoturtle 6y ago

Another happy long time user of NFS here. Just thought I'd chime in to add my 2 cents, on the off chance that it helps someone here make an informed decision. NFS is also great for small MySQL backed sites - for example your Wordpress blog or something similar. Their pricing model is so transparent and predictable, and the support from Jeff and co is great (their documentation and FAQ is simply brilliant). Also their domain registration and setup is a breeze - and they have great Whois privacy support. These guys were doing pay-as-you-use pricing long before AWS came along. We still use (and love) AWS for our extensive production systems, but for simple hosting of smaller projects and / or personal websites, NFS is unbeatable. Its combination of affordability and ease of use is simply the best.

hamburglar 6y ago
They’re also quite on the ball with system monitoring. I remember once about 15 years ago when I decided to see if I was able to ssh tunnel a socks proxy through their shell machine (I was curious what would happen) and they had my account suspended within minutes. :D Great job, guys (sincerely). Took me promising never to do it again to get reinstated.

pronoiac 6y ago

I'm pretty fond of them, but their service charges for support gradually add up if you have many sites there. I'm moving some items to a $5 VPS.

newscracker 6y ago
Have you looked at using the per-alias document root feature? Depending on your needs, you could host multiple domains and "sites" on one NSFN site using this feature. This makes all of them share certain things and doesn't allow the amount of resilience that separate NSFN sites would allow, but it's an easy way to reduce your costs if your needs aren't very demanding.

throwawaysea 6y ago

Does this service live up to their name? Are they for free speech principles or do they have their own content moderation policies that go above the legal minimums?

busymom0 6y ago
You be the judge based on this blog post: https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2021/01/19/free-speech-in-2021/ https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2021/01/19/free-speech-in-... Imo, answer is no. Any site which uses terms like "sea of mayonnaise" to describe people while claiming to be against racism is giving lip service and lacks self awareness.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  Wow that is a really disappointing blog post, both for showing they aren’t content neutral and because of its unprofessional tone. Thanks, there have to be better options out there.

johnx123-up 6y ago

> 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 How do you handle it?

zck 6y ago
In the .htaccess: RewriteEngine on RewriteCond ${REQUEST_FILENAME} !-D RewriteRule "^((?:.*/)*[^/.]+)$" "$1.html" [NC]
- johnx123-up 6y ago
  Thank you
- hunter2_ 6y ago
  Any reason not to just use Options MultiViews instead?
  - zck 6y ago
    Mainly because I did not know that existed. I'll have to test it before thinking about switching it out. I wonder if there's some sort of unit test suite for .htaccess configurations -- big changes like this could definitely break something, and my config works for me now. It does seem like it might be more magic than I prefer in programming, though.

Ciantic 6y ago

From NFS site: > Currently we are not tracking (and hence not billing for) extra bandwidth usage. This is subject to change at any time. What do you do if your small static site gets suddenly HN audience? Do you then pay thousands for the bandwidth? For simple static sites, I always look at the egress rates and bandwidth caps. For example if you have Wasabi+Cloudflare, then you know the pricing before hand. Wasabi doesn't have egress fees even if Cloudflare were to redirect all traffic for a while to your files.

polm23 6y ago
Having been on the HN frontpage several times with my small static site, it doesn't even show up in my monthly billing reports. The main fluctuation is for when I renew domains.
hamburglar 6y ago
They say in their FAQ that a typical slashdot/reddit surge costs a typical site under $10. If you keep a $20 buffer you're probably fine, and the worst case is you burn through that and the site shuts off until you put more in.

DarrenDev 6y ago

I've used NFSN for hosting almost-zero traffic static sites for years. But, if it's the cheapest host you're after they're not it. The pay as you go model they use can mislead you into assuming they cost pennies because you pay small amounts each time, but with a half a dozen sites hosted you can expect to get hit by top up warnings a few times a year. I've just double checked my email receipts, and I had to top up $60 in 2020 just to keep those static zero-traffic sites up and running. Standard, bare bones, shared Linux/MySQL hosting anywhere else will rarely set you back more than $40-$50 a year. There's really no commercial reason to choose NFSN.

polm23 6y ago
Is saving $10 over a year worth the time it took you to do the math on that?

polm23 6y ago

I've been using NFSN for over ten years. Most of my sites with them are static, and it's great that when I'm on the front page of HN I never have to worry about anything, it's just business as usual.