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Dreamhost is hugely underrated. Their custom panel with deep integrations are phenomenal for side projects or small businesses. In under a minute you can have

Dreamhost is hugely underrated. Their custom panel with deep integrations are phenomenal for side projects or small businesses. In under a minute you can have your web server, SSL cert, database and more all setup and working - and you don’t have to manage any of it. I wish more companies offered their level of managed services. (If anyone knows of others, I’d like to hear who)

dragontamer 4y ago
Is there anything really wrong with a CPanel host with FTP upload? Namecheap, Dreamhost, GoDaddy even (well maybe not them lol). There are a billion shared hosts everywhere and CPanel really isn't hard to use for HTTPS enabling or getting FTP locations to work with. ------ Bonus points: shove a random .php file in there and it probably will work if you need just a little bit of dynamic content.
- alberth 4y ago
  There’s a massive difference in quality and ease of use between cPanel and dreamhost custom panel. I’ve been a customer since 2004
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    Well, I'm sure that's true. But I guess my overall point is that CPanel is way easier than anything the original poster / author wrote.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >Is there anything really wrong with a CPanel host with FTP upload? Nothing, other than that it's not cool with the kids because it's the grandpa's way of being a webmaster. Personally, being an old school grump, I'll choose FTP upload over Git nonsense any day of the week because why in the nine seas of the seven hells do I need to sign up for Github, upload all my crap there, download-install and run a Git daemon, feed it my Github login credentials, let the daemon download and sync/compile/whatever the code I have there, and then probably run the whole contraption through sixty dozen frameworks of JavaShit to have a website? I'll just fire up Filezilla or whatever is the trendy FTP client nowadays, punch in my login creds, upload my crap that I wrote up in Notepad++, maybe have some fun with PHP because I'm old school, and be done with it. :V
  - pdimitar 4y ago
    You over-focus on what's cool or fashionable. For many of us that's absolutely not the reason to go (or not to go) with a platform. GIT is extremely useful for versioning. I want that. If I make a dumb mistake I want to have a diff that I've fixed a typo / grammar / added more links etc. You neither need to use GitHub nor give your GitHub credentials to anything. You can just make a public repo and have it cloned / pulled-from by literally anyone interested -- why would anyone clone your public blog repo and re-host it? You can use sr.ht, Codeberg or just host your own GIT -- it's not that hard if you're into it (I am not). Your way of doing it is fine but let's not pretend that everyone else is following fashion or coolness. That's very rarely true. There's a list of very good reasons to use a public GIT repo + Netlify + use a static site generator on your own machine to only produce a directory of HTML+CSS files.
    - Dalewyn 4y ago
      Generally speaking, I subscribe to the philosophy of KISS. For a multi-user environment where a dozen people could be accessing the same file at any given time, yeah some sort of version control system will probably make everyone's life easier. For a single user environment as is likely the case for most static websites? Yeah, it's just needless complexity. In fact, you lost me at "static site generator". WTF? Just write the damn HTML and CSS yourself, it's static after all. This isn't to say your way isn't wrong /for you/, of course. Whatever floats your boat. For me, it's all just unnecessary complexity that will invite in all sorts of gremlins to waste my time.
      - pdimitar 4y ago
        > For a single user environment as is likely the case for most static websites? Yeah, it's just needless complexity. Hard disagree. As I said above and you ignored it (no clue why): I want to have a history of my static website. > In fact, you lost me at "static site generator". WTF? Just write the damn HTML and CSS yourself, it's static after all. I can and I don't want to. Markdown is tons easier, you write out an article, execute one command, push the updated HTML+CSS files to GIT and you're done. If we're talking about simplicity let's not ignore that scenario because it really is quite simple. I got a backlog of 30 things to work on and 500+ to check out "one day when I have the time". Going back to hand-crafting HTML is likely at spot #1784 in my brain. It's a meaningless paperwork that can and must be outsourced to computers.
chubot 4y ago
FWIW I also tried NearlyFreeSpeech, which is the top comment in the same thread I linked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253277 I think it is good, and will solve people's static hosting problem. It's a server that you don't have to manage. It has a nice fast custom web interface. Except I didn't realize it was FreeBSD. That probably doesn't matter for most, but I'm used to Linux, so I like Dreamhost better. Also I feel like they are using some kind of slower NFS disk, whereas Dreamhost feels like a bare metal disk mostly. ----- I was trying to find another thread here, where someone remarked that "shared hosting" got a bad reputation in the early days due to janky control panels and bad/aggressive marketing. Also a lot of the companies seem to have gotten acquired in the early 2000's, i.e. they changed hands a lot. But again I've been using Dreamhost since 2009 and it's been great. No complaints except the typical thing everyone does of raising the domain name pricing after a year (the advertised price is the "first year discount"). They have not raised the hosting fees. (You might save $3 per year using a domain name purchased elsewhere, but that doesn't seem worth the hassle to me.) So I thought there were many other shared hosting companies, but maybe not? Maybe they all got caught up in acquisitions and then the service declined? (That's exactly what's going to happen with the free cloud services you're all using now BTW, so that's why I stick with something older and proven.) I have used 1and1 in the early 2000's, but I remember it being very janky and weird, and Dreamhost is a lot better technically. They seem to have more competent system administration. ---- FWIW here is a thread with some competitors: https://lobste.rs/s/jkutwc/recommendations_for_shared_hosting_with https://lobste.rs/s/jkutwc/recommendations_for_shared_hostin... Honestly I wonder if Dreamhost is more unique now than it used to be? I thought of it as "commodity shared hosting" -- i.e. a Linux OS and a web server. But I think that actually being able to manage that competently is a dying art :-/ Other threads I bookmarked while looking for shared hosting that supports FastCGI (dynamic sites, not static, and not PHP!): bluehost: https://www.bluehost.com/help/article/fastcgi-for-php https://www.bluehost.com/help/article/fastcgi-for-php hostgator: https://www.hostgator.com/help/article/does-hostgator-support-fastcgi https://www.hostgator.com/help/article/does-hostgator-suppor... I'd be interested to know if those companies are comparable to dreamhost!
- kej 4y ago
  As a long time (but very light) Nearly Free Speech user who is also more used to Linux, I'm curious if you ran into specific problems because of them using FreeBSD, or if it was just the general feeling of things being slightly different than you're used to (which is totally a valid reason to prefer something else, I'm just wondering if it was more than that)?
trinovantes 4y ago
I think this is what Cloudflare Pages tries to solve You just connect your git repo and tell it what command to run to build your site and where the html output is
- alberth 4y ago
  I really love Pages but for simple apps that are just PHP and MySQL - Pages doesn’t support that.
  - Syeposxr 4y ago
    Well in that case it's not a static site any more.
js4ever 4y ago
Please check https://elest.io https://elest.io You can deploy WordPress, Ghost, Magento and 185 fully managed software. You get a dedicated VM with stellar performances, SSL, smtp, security, borg ans S3 backups, monitoring, logs and full root access even if it's managed. We also support CI/CD pipelines. Disclaimer: I work there ;)

dragontamer 4y ago

Is there anything really wrong with a CPanel host with FTP upload? Namecheap, Dreamhost, GoDaddy even (well maybe not them lol). There are a billion shared hosts everywhere and CPanel really isn't hard to use for HTTPS enabling or getting FTP locations to work with. ------ Bonus points: shove a random .php file in there and it probably will work if you need just a little bit of dynamic content.

alberth 4y ago
There’s a massive difference in quality and ease of use between cPanel and dreamhost custom panel. I’ve been a customer since 2004
- dragontamer 4y ago
  Well, I'm sure that's true. But I guess my overall point is that CPanel is way easier than anything the original poster / author wrote.
Dalewyn 4y ago
>Is there anything really wrong with a CPanel host with FTP upload? Nothing, other than that it's not cool with the kids because it's the grandpa's way of being a webmaster. Personally, being an old school grump, I'll choose FTP upload over Git nonsense any day of the week because why in the nine seas of the seven hells do I need to sign up for Github, upload all my crap there, download-install and run a Git daemon, feed it my Github login credentials, let the daemon download and sync/compile/whatever the code I have there, and then probably run the whole contraption through sixty dozen frameworks of JavaShit to have a website? I'll just fire up Filezilla or whatever is the trendy FTP client nowadays, punch in my login creds, upload my crap that I wrote up in Notepad++, maybe have some fun with PHP because I'm old school, and be done with it. :V
- pdimitar 4y ago
  You over-focus on what's cool or fashionable. For many of us that's absolutely not the reason to go (or not to go) with a platform. GIT is extremely useful for versioning. I want that. If I make a dumb mistake I want to have a diff that I've fixed a typo / grammar / added more links etc. You neither need to use GitHub nor give your GitHub credentials to anything. You can just make a public repo and have it cloned / pulled-from by literally anyone interested -- why would anyone clone your public blog repo and re-host it? You can use sr.ht, Codeberg or just host your own GIT -- it's not that hard if you're into it (I am not). Your way of doing it is fine but let's not pretend that everyone else is following fashion or coolness. That's very rarely true. There's a list of very good reasons to use a public GIT repo + Netlify + use a static site generator on your own machine to only produce a directory of HTML+CSS files.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    Generally speaking, I subscribe to the philosophy of KISS. For a multi-user environment where a dozen people could be accessing the same file at any given time, yeah some sort of version control system will probably make everyone's life easier. For a single user environment as is likely the case for most static websites? Yeah, it's just needless complexity. In fact, you lost me at "static site generator". WTF? Just write the damn HTML and CSS yourself, it's static after all. This isn't to say your way isn't wrong /for you/, of course. Whatever floats your boat. For me, it's all just unnecessary complexity that will invite in all sorts of gremlins to waste my time.
    - pdimitar 4y ago
      > For a single user environment as is likely the case for most static websites? Yeah, it's just needless complexity. Hard disagree. As I said above and you ignored it (no clue why): I want to have a history of my static website. > In fact, you lost me at "static site generator". WTF? Just write the damn HTML and CSS yourself, it's static after all. I can and I don't want to. Markdown is tons easier, you write out an article, execute one command, push the updated HTML+CSS files to GIT and you're done. If we're talking about simplicity let's not ignore that scenario because it really is quite simple. I got a backlog of 30 things to work on and 500+ to check out "one day when I have the time". Going back to hand-crafting HTML is likely at spot #1784 in my brain. It's a meaningless paperwork that can and must be outsourced to computers.

chubot 4y ago

FWIW I also tried NearlyFreeSpeech, which is the top comment in the same thread I linked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253277 I think it is good, and will solve people's static hosting problem. It's a server that you don't have to manage. It has a nice fast custom web interface. Except I didn't realize it was FreeBSD. That probably doesn't matter for most, but I'm used to Linux, so I like Dreamhost better. Also I feel like they are using some kind of slower NFS disk, whereas Dreamhost feels like a bare metal disk mostly. ----- I was trying to find another thread here, where someone remarked that "shared hosting" got a bad reputation in the early days due to janky control panels and bad/aggressive marketing. Also a lot of the companies seem to have gotten acquired in the early 2000's, i.e. they changed hands a lot. But again I've been using Dreamhost since 2009 and it's been great. No complaints except the typical thing everyone does of raising the domain name pricing after a year (the advertised price is the "first year discount"). They have not raised the hosting fees. (You might save $3 per year using a domain name purchased elsewhere, but that doesn't seem worth the hassle to me.) So I thought there were many other shared hosting companies, but maybe not? Maybe they all got caught up in acquisitions and then the service declined? (That's exactly what's going to happen with the free cloud services you're all using now BTW, so that's why I stick with something older and proven.) I have used 1and1 in the early 2000's, but I remember it being very janky and weird, and Dreamhost is a lot better technically. They seem to have more competent system administration. ---- FWIW here is a thread with some competitors: https://lobste.rs/s/jkutwc/recommendations_for_shared_hosting_with https://lobste.rs/s/jkutwc/recommendations_for_shared_hostin... Honestly I wonder if Dreamhost is more unique now than it used to be? I thought of it as "commodity shared hosting" -- i.e. a Linux OS and a web server. But I think that actually being able to manage that competently is a dying art :-/ Other threads I bookmarked while looking for shared hosting that supports FastCGI (dynamic sites, not static, and not PHP!): bluehost: https://www.bluehost.com/help/article/fastcgi-for-php https://www.bluehost.com/help/article/fastcgi-for-php hostgator: https://www.hostgator.com/help/article/does-hostgator-support-fastcgi https://www.hostgator.com/help/article/does-hostgator-suppor... I'd be interested to know if those companies are comparable to dreamhost!

kej 4y ago
As a long time (but very light) Nearly Free Speech user who is also more used to Linux, I'm curious if you ran into specific problems because of them using FreeBSD, or if it was just the general feeling of things being slightly different than you're used to (which is totally a valid reason to prefer something else, I'm just wondering if it was more than that)?

trinovantes 4y ago

I think this is what Cloudflare Pages tries to solve You just connect your git repo and tell it what command to run to build your site and where the html output is

alberth 4y ago
I really love Pages but for simple apps that are just PHP and MySQL - Pages doesn’t support that.
- Syeposxr 4y ago
  Well in that case it's not a static site any more.

js4ever 4y ago

Please check https://elest.io https://elest.io You can deploy WordPress, Ghost, Magento and 185 fully managed software. You get a dedicated VM with stellar performances, SSL, smtp, security, borg ans S3 backups, monitoring, logs and full root access even if it's managed. We also support CI/CD pipelines. Disclaimer: I work there ;)