4 ms·

A static site is really easy to host and HN's hug of death isn't actually that intense; the site itself only gets like six million views a day, a fraction of th

by caslon 6y ago

A static site is really easy to host and HN's hug of death isn't actually that intense; the site itself only gets like six million views a day, a fraction of those click on every link, and no syndicated page has much reach.

jerf 6y ago
People badly overestimate what it takes to serve a website nowadays. I don't know whether it's just because we're all used to 10+ second website loads as our browser groans under the weight of all the trackers, or if we all have too much experience with web pages that run multiple 10ms+ unoptimized queries against databases that pull way too much data back, etc. and so we all think web pages are some sort of challenge, but webpages themselves really aren't that hard. It's all the stuff you're trying to put in to them that is the challenge. I hit SHIFT-CTRL-r to watch the page reload under the network debugger so I could get a snapshot of the total size, which looks to be about 100KB, just eyeballing the sums, so at 10MB/s it should be able to serve around 100 requests/second, which is enough for most websites, even ones getting hugged.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  Reminds me of when my university changed from “CCnet”, running all courseware/grading on custom code written by an engineering professor running on a tower under his desk to WebCT/blackboard. The former worked fast and without any issues, but the latter just groaned and groaned and crashed. During the transition, a prof asked the class which one to use and all 250 people said in unison “CCnet”. “ Its main virtues were the stark, no-nonsense interface and the incredibly efficient (although complex) database system that made CCNet ideal for running large numbers of courses with very little by way of server computing resources.” https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/technology/what-learning-management-system https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/technology/what-learning-manage...
- kelnos 6y ago
  That's 10 mega bits per second, not bytes.
- throwaway189262 6y ago
  We have a Rails app that struggles at 50 req/sec. It has an embedded Angular app whose back end easy handles 10,000 . One of the reasons were trying to migrate is that Rails servers cost us almost an engineer salary, where our other backend is ~200/month
stadium 6y ago
I recently migrated a personal blog running on a hugo static site to digital ocean with automated github deployment, SSL certificates, CDN, and a custom domain. It took all of 15 minutes including updating the DNS on my custom domain registrar.
- verst 6y ago
  I find GitHub Pages even easier for that scenario.
- t0mas88 6y ago
  The same but with AWS S3 instead of a VPS is even simpler and avoids any maintenance / software updates. The bandwidth is more expensive but for a small personal site it shouldn't make much of a difference because you also save the price of the VPS.
  - stadium 6y ago
    I'm using DO's free tier. The static site hosting may be a new feature. There is no VPS needed for it. My AWS S3 skills weren't good enough to figure out the CDN + https. S3 static hosting without those was super simple though.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by caslon 6y ago

jerf 6y ago

People badly overestimate what it takes to serve a website nowadays. I don't know whether it's just because we're all used to 10+ second website loads as our browser groans under the weight of all the trackers, or if we all have too much experience with web pages that run multiple 10ms+ unoptimized queries against databases that pull way too much data back, etc. and so we all think web pages are some sort of challenge, but webpages themselves really aren't that hard. It's all the stuff you're trying to put in to them that is the challenge. I hit SHIFT-CTRL-r to watch the page reload under the network debugger so I could get a snapshot of the total size, which looks to be about 100KB, just eyeballing the sums, so at 10MB/s it should be able to serve around 100 requests/second, which is enough for most websites, even ones getting hugged.

Scoundreller 6y ago
Reminds me of when my university changed from “CCnet”, running all courseware/grading on custom code written by an engineering professor running on a tower under his desk to WebCT/blackboard. The former worked fast and without any issues, but the latter just groaned and groaned and crashed. During the transition, a prof asked the class which one to use and all 250 people said in unison “CCnet”. “ Its main virtues were the stark, no-nonsense interface and the incredibly efficient (although complex) database system that made CCNet ideal for running large numbers of courses with very little by way of server computing resources.” https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/technology/what-learning-management-system https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/technology/what-learning-manage...
kelnos 6y ago
That's 10 mega bits per second, not bytes.
throwaway189262 6y ago
We have a Rails app that struggles at 50 req/sec. It has an embedded Angular app whose back end easy handles 10,000 . One of the reasons were trying to migrate is that Rails servers cost us almost an engineer salary, where our other backend is ~200/month

stadium 6y ago

I recently migrated a personal blog running on a hugo static site to digital ocean with automated github deployment, SSL certificates, CDN, and a custom domain. It took all of 15 minutes including updating the DNS on my custom domain registrar.

verst 6y ago
I find GitHub Pages even easier for that scenario.
t0mas88 6y ago
The same but with AWS S3 instead of a VPS is even simpler and avoids any maintenance / software updates. The bandwidth is more expensive but for a small personal site it shouldn't make much of a difference because you also save the price of the VPS.
- stadium 6y ago
  I'm using DO's free tier. The static site hosting may be a new feature. There is no VPS needed for it. My AWS S3 skills weren't good enough to figure out the CDN + https. S3 static hosting without those was super simple though.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]