3 ms·

Really? If I’m an unsophisticated blog not using a CDN, and I get a $1000 bill for bandwidth overage or something, I’m gonna google a solve and slap it on there

by jitl 1y ago

Really? If I’m an unsophisticated blog not using a CDN, and I get a $1000 bill for bandwidth overage or something, I’m gonna google a solve and slap it on there because I don’t want to pay another $1000 for Big Basilisk. I don’t think that’s emotional response, it’s common sense.

phantompeace 1y ago
Wouldn't it be easier to put the unsophisticated blog behind cloudflare
- mhuffman 1y ago
  As much as I like to shit on cloudflare at every opportunity, it would obviously be easier to put it behind CF than install bot detection plugins.
marginalia_nu 1y ago
Seems like you've made profoundly questionable hosting or design choices for that to happen. Flat rate web hosting exists, and blogs (especially unsophisticated ones) do not require much bandwidth or processing power. Misbehaving crawlers are a huge problem but bloggers are among the least affected by them. Something like a wiki or a forum is a better example, as they're in a category of websites where each page visit is almost unavoidably rendered on the fly using multiple expensive SQL queries due to the rapidly mutating nature of their datasets. Git forges, like the one TFA is discussing, are also fairly expensive, especially as crawlers traverse historical states. When the crawler is poorly implemented they'll get stuck doing this basically forever. Detecting and dealing with git hosts is an absolute must for any web crawler due to this.
- mtlynch 1y ago
  >Flat rate web hosting exists, and blogs (especially unsophisticated ones) do not require much bandwidth or processing power. I actually find this surprisingly difficult to find. I just want static hosting (like Netlify or Firebase Hosting), but there aren't many hosts that offer that. There are lots of providers where I can buy a VPS somewhere and be in charge of configuring and patching it, but if I just want to hand someone a set of HTML files and some money in exchange for hosting, not many hosts fit the bill.
  - marginalia_nu 1y ago
    If you just want to host HTML for personal use github pages is free (and works with a custom domain). There are bandwidth limitations, but they definitely won't pull an AWS on you and send a bill that would cover a new car because a crawler acted up.
    - mtlynch 1y ago
      Github Pages' "soft" bandwidth limit is 100 MB. I typically use 300-500 GB per month at Netlify, so I'm over Github's limit. I actually don't even want a free option. I want to pay a vendor that cares about keeping my website online. I'm fine paying $20-50/mo as long as it's bounded and they don't just take my site offline if I see a spike from HN.
  - diggan 1y ago
    > There are lots of providers where I can buy a VPS somewhere and be in charge of configuring and patching it, but if I just want to hand someone a set of HTML files and some money in exchange for hosting, not many hosts fit the bill. Yeah, that's true, there isn't a lot of "I give you money and HTML, you host it" services out there, surprisingly. Probably the most mature, cheapest and most reliable one today would be good ol' neocities.org (run by HN user kyledrake) which basically gives you 3TB/month for $5, pretty good deal :) Sometimes when I miss StumbleUpon I go to https://neocities.org/browse?sort_by=random https://neocities.org/browse?sort_by=random which gives a fun little glimpse of the hobby/curiosity/creative web.
  - ctoth 1y ago
    > There are lots of providers where I can buy a VPS somewhere and be in charge of configuring and patching it, but if I just want to hand someone a set of HTML files and some money in exchange for hosting, not many hosts fit the bill. Dreamhost! They're still around and still lovely after how many years? I even find their custom control panel charming.
    - hobs 1y ago
      I really like DH(though I am still mad about the cloudatcost shenanigans) and use them but if you use 200x the resources the other shared sites consume you're getting the boot just like anyone.

by jitl 1y ago

phantompeace 1y ago

Wouldn't it be easier to put the unsophisticated blog behind cloudflare

mhuffman 1y ago
As much as I like to shit on cloudflare at every opportunity, it would obviously be easier to put it behind CF than install bot detection plugins.

marginalia_nu 1y ago

Seems like you've made profoundly questionable hosting or design choices for that to happen. Flat rate web hosting exists, and blogs (especially unsophisticated ones) do not require much bandwidth or processing power. Misbehaving crawlers are a huge problem but bloggers are among the least affected by them. Something like a wiki or a forum is a better example, as they're in a category of websites where each page visit is almost unavoidably rendered on the fly using multiple expensive SQL queries due to the rapidly mutating nature of their datasets. Git forges, like the one TFA is discussing, are also fairly expensive, especially as crawlers traverse historical states. When the crawler is poorly implemented they'll get stuck doing this basically forever. Detecting and dealing with git hosts is an absolute must for any web crawler due to this.

mtlynch 1y ago
>Flat rate web hosting exists, and blogs (especially unsophisticated ones) do not require much bandwidth or processing power. I actually find this surprisingly difficult to find. I just want static hosting (like Netlify or Firebase Hosting), but there aren't many hosts that offer that. There are lots of providers where I can buy a VPS somewhere and be in charge of configuring and patching it, but if I just want to hand someone a set of HTML files and some money in exchange for hosting, not many hosts fit the bill.
- marginalia_nu 1y ago
  If you just want to host HTML for personal use github pages is free (and works with a custom domain). There are bandwidth limitations, but they definitely won't pull an AWS on you and send a bill that would cover a new car because a crawler acted up.
  - mtlynch 1y ago
    Github Pages' "soft" bandwidth limit is 100 MB. I typically use 300-500 GB per month at Netlify, so I'm over Github's limit. I actually don't even want a free option. I want to pay a vendor that cares about keeping my website online. I'm fine paying $20-50/mo as long as it's bounded and they don't just take my site offline if I see a spike from HN.
- diggan 1y ago
  > There are lots of providers where I can buy a VPS somewhere and be in charge of configuring and patching it, but if I just want to hand someone a set of HTML files and some money in exchange for hosting, not many hosts fit the bill. Yeah, that's true, there isn't a lot of "I give you money and HTML, you host it" services out there, surprisingly. Probably the most mature, cheapest and most reliable one today would be good ol' neocities.org (run by HN user kyledrake) which basically gives you 3TB/month for $5, pretty good deal :) Sometimes when I miss StumbleUpon I go to https://neocities.org/browse?sort_by=random https://neocities.org/browse?sort_by=random which gives a fun little glimpse of the hobby/curiosity/creative web.
- ctoth 1y ago
  > There are lots of providers where I can buy a VPS somewhere and be in charge of configuring and patching it, but if I just want to hand someone a set of HTML files and some money in exchange for hosting, not many hosts fit the bill. Dreamhost! They're still around and still lovely after how many years? I even find their custom control panel charming.
  - hobs 1y ago
    I really like DH(though I am still mad about the cloudatcost shenanigans) and use them but if you use 200x the resources the other shared sites consume you're getting the boot just like anyone.