12 ms·

Darklang is a cool project and I'm happy to hear it's still being worked on. > I have a few 'static' websites that I'm paying nearly $700/year for [...] and I

Darklang is a cool project and I'm happy to hear it's still being worked on. > I have a few 'static' websites that I'm paying nearly $700/year for [...] and I doubt any of them are getting much traffic how come? I know it's easy to lose track of dev tooling expenses, but this is beyond imaginable to me

api 3y ago
They are probably on Vercel or some other zero interest rate architecture abomination.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  Yeah a static site should cost 20-30$/year at most even with quite a bit of data. Probably some cloud mess indeed. Yeah yeah ‘but the site is always up on my cloud’ aha… aha…
  - pianoben 3y ago
    A static site should be _free_, on Github Pages at least. If all you're doing is hosting static assets, what more do you need?
    - freeone3000 3y ago
      Your own domain.
      - stachudotnet 3y ago
        Yeah -- I haven't found a super-simple way of hosting for free, on my domain, with browsers not complaining about it being served over http. Maybe that's me missing some big simple option, but Darklang-classic's setup for hosting a simple website on a personal domain was _nice_ and I'm looking forward to getting that again with -next.
        throwaway11460 3y ago
        Github Pages has free static hosting with SSL on custom domains.
      - l0b0 3y ago
        GitLab Pages lets you use your own domain. I do for my blog, and it was super easy.
        stachudotnet 3y ago
        good to know! I probably will hold out until I just port everythin to dark, but good to hear of yet another thing that gitlab does better than github.
        arccy 3y ago
        you can also use custom domains on github pages
        freeone3000 3y ago
        Yes, it is! But you still have to pay for the domain :P
    - egeozcan 3y ago
      They should pay you for your static web site, you are providing content! /s
- CipherThrowaway 3y ago
  He provides the cost breakdown in the blog.
- mwcampbell 3y ago
  I'm curious, do you consider Fly a "zero interest rate architecture abomination"? I guess multi-region, "edge" deployments are trendy, but I do think it's useful in some cases.
  - api 3y ago
    I'm not familiar enough with Fly.io to say. Probably would depend a lot on the use case and whether that use case is overkill for what fly.io does. Zero interest rate architecture is a term I've loosely coined to represent software and infrastructure with some combination of: * A general level of complexity far in excess of what's necessary to get the job done. * Lots of expensive SaaS, often multiple pieces of it chained together in complex work flows. E.g. git commit to Github triggers build at service X and deployment to service Y authenticated by service Z and fronted by yet another thing and with logs sent to Datadog and... and... and... and... * Despite the use of expensive SaaS the system still requires a lot of babysitting and manual administration, negating the point of using SaaS. Using expensive SaaS makes zero sense, full stop, unless it is saving you enough time and cognitive load to more than pay for itself. Any static web site that costs more than $5/month kinda falls in this category for me. I picked on Vercel because JAMstack often fits these criteria. I've seen companies spending thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a month hosting static web sites. These could have been built on one workstation using a container or a VM and deployed at any static hosting service, but instead you have this complicated gitops workflow with multiple interlocking expensive services. The whole thing has dizzying complexity, tons of moving parts, breaks all the time, and costs a fortune. The goal guiding these designs seems to be a desire to avoid doing things in house. In-house things are complicated and ad-hoc and expensive. So instead of doing things in-house you jam together a bunch of services... which ends up being complicated and ad-hoc and even more expensive. When it comes to complexity you've just moved the peas around on the plate, and you're spending more. I call it zero interest rate architecture because the absurd cost of this stuff wasn't a big deal when VC money was basically free. "Just grow as fast as possible. You can optimize later."
stachudotnet 3y ago
Basically I'm an idiot. I pay for ghost, which costs money. I have some stuff on AWS to manage SSL (which imo shouldn't cost as much as it does and maybe I'm doing something dumb). I pay for fireside, which is _basically_ a static site. I also have a site that _should_ be static, but I tried to be fancy and do server-side rendering, which is costing me, because again, I'm an idiot who was once ambitious.
- pests 3y ago
  If the last one is built with React look into the new React Server Components. Pretty much everything that's not strictly dynamic can not only be rendered server-side, but you can also prerender entire component hierarchies into static HTML assets.

api 3y ago

They are probably on Vercel or some other zero interest rate architecture abomination.

anonzzzies 3y ago
Yeah a static site should cost 20-30$/year at most even with quite a bit of data. Probably some cloud mess indeed. Yeah yeah ‘but the site is always up on my cloud’ aha… aha…
- pianoben 3y ago
  A static site should be _free_, on Github Pages at least. If all you're doing is hosting static assets, what more do you need?
  - freeone3000 3y ago
    Your own domain.
    - stachudotnet 3y ago
      Yeah -- I haven't found a super-simple way of hosting for free, on my domain, with browsers not complaining about it being served over http. Maybe that's me missing some big simple option, but Darklang-classic's setup for hosting a simple website on a personal domain was _nice_ and I'm looking forward to getting that again with -next.
      - throwaway11460 3y ago
        Github Pages has free static hosting with SSL on custom domains.
    - l0b0 3y ago
      GitLab Pages lets you use your own domain. I do for my blog, and it was super easy.
      - stachudotnet 3y ago
        good to know! I probably will hold out until I just port everythin to dark, but good to hear of yet another thing that gitlab does better than github.
        arccy 3y ago
        you can also use custom domains on github pages
      - freeone3000 3y ago
        Yes, it is! But you still have to pay for the domain :P
  - egeozcan 3y ago
    They should pay you for your static web site, you are providing content! /s
CipherThrowaway 3y ago
He provides the cost breakdown in the blog.
mwcampbell 3y ago
I'm curious, do you consider Fly a "zero interest rate architecture abomination"? I guess multi-region, "edge" deployments are trendy, but I do think it's useful in some cases.
- api 3y ago
  I'm not familiar enough with Fly.io to say. Probably would depend a lot on the use case and whether that use case is overkill for what fly.io does. Zero interest rate architecture is a term I've loosely coined to represent software and infrastructure with some combination of: * A general level of complexity far in excess of what's necessary to get the job done. * Lots of expensive SaaS, often multiple pieces of it chained together in complex work flows. E.g. git commit to Github triggers build at service X and deployment to service Y authenticated by service Z and fronted by yet another thing and with logs sent to Datadog and... and... and... and... * Despite the use of expensive SaaS the system still requires a lot of babysitting and manual administration, negating the point of using SaaS. Using expensive SaaS makes zero sense, full stop, unless it is saving you enough time and cognitive load to more than pay for itself. Any static web site that costs more than $5/month kinda falls in this category for me. I picked on Vercel because JAMstack often fits these criteria. I've seen companies spending thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a month hosting static web sites. These could have been built on one workstation using a container or a VM and deployed at any static hosting service, but instead you have this complicated gitops workflow with multiple interlocking expensive services. The whole thing has dizzying complexity, tons of moving parts, breaks all the time, and costs a fortune. The goal guiding these designs seems to be a desire to avoid doing things in house. In-house things are complicated and ad-hoc and expensive. So instead of doing things in-house you jam together a bunch of services... which ends up being complicated and ad-hoc and even more expensive. When it comes to complexity you've just moved the peas around on the plate, and you're spending more. I call it zero interest rate architecture because the absurd cost of this stuff wasn't a big deal when VC money was basically free. "Just grow as fast as possible. You can optimize later."

stachudotnet 3y ago

Basically I'm an idiot. I pay for ghost, which costs money. I have some stuff on AWS to manage SSL (which imo shouldn't cost as much as it does and maybe I'm doing something dumb). I pay for fireside, which is _basically_ a static site. I also have a site that _should_ be static, but I tried to be fancy and do server-side rendering, which is costing me, because again, I'm an idiot who was once ambitious.

pests 3y ago
If the last one is built with React look into the new React Server Components. Pretty much everything that's not strictly dynamic can not only be rendered server-side, but you can also prerender entire component hierarchies into static HTML assets.