5 ms·

Forge - Static hosting made simple

19 points by elliottkember 13y ago

afandian 13y ago
I've got two different error messages. The status page has no idea there's anything wrong.
diggan 13y ago
Not a very good first impression. >"This doesn't happen often, but it looks like something is broke." Well, your initial page is broken. >"Hitting the back button and trying again might be your best bet." Nope, didn't work. >"If that doesn't work you can head back to the homepage. " That's the page I'm trying to go to! >"There might be more information on our status page which is reporting All Systems Operational." Yeaah.. No, all systems aren't operational.
- elliottkember 13y ago
  Sorry about that - it's up and down at the moment. We only just launched and quickly hit our DB limit. We're waiting to upgrade the database until after the initial traffic wears off as it involves taking the site down completely. Rock and a hard place!
lubos 13y ago
The site is either showing error message, loading really really slow or finally fast as advertised. Very inconsistent performance. Staying with Amazon CloudFront for static hosting. One question though, is SSL supported for custom domains? that's the only thing I would be willing to switch from CloudFront for.
elliottkember 13y ago
Sorry everybody! We hit our Heroku database limit unexpectedly. We're hesitant to upgrade while our initial launch traffic hits so are maintaining the site manually. Sites hosted on Forge are elsewhere and performing just fine.
- danaw 13y ago
  That seems to be a bit short sighted to me. You're turning off potential users because your site is down and you have an easy fix for the problem? Seems like a bad strategy to me...
- Kudos 13y ago
  I'm torn between upvoting this for visibility and downvoting it for being dumb.
  - elliottkember 13y ago
    You can go ahead and downvote it since it's all fixed now. Worse yet, the migration ended up only taking two minutes, so downvote this one while you're at it.
- neilmiddleton 13y ago
  So you were running on the starter databases? Slick.
- midhir 13y ago
  Ouch. I've been on the receiving end of Heroku outages during heavy traffic, it's zero craic. But it happens. Give the guys a break lads, it's hard to anticipate this. Still, maybe hosting the static front page on... err.. S3 might've kept it up ;) -Edited for end of day stupidity-
neilmiddleton 13y ago
How's this different/better than S3?
kylec 13y ago
$10/month for 10GB seems really expensive. For example, $5/month for a Digital Ocean VPS includes 1TB transfer. Now, maybe Forge is much faster or more robust, but is it really worth 200x as much per GB?
- elliottkember 13y ago
  That's 10GB of CDN bandwidth, which is much faster, and geographically distributed.
  - resu 13y ago
    It still doesn't make any sense. You can get the same drag and drop deployment with graphical ftp software and 1-click static site deployment. At 1/100th of the cost.
danaw 13y ago
I'm not having an errors accessing the site, however I'm a bit turned off by pricing. $10/m seems steep to me for just hosting static files. I especially don't like that I can't do a git push to deploy updates (breaks my workflow) and having to zip files seems unnecessary. I also don't see any must have features; hosting on a CDN isn't a killer feature and the zip deploy, at least for me, makes it a no go.
- elliottkember 13y ago
  That's fine - Forge isn't for everybody. Our target market is front-end developers and designers, or anybody who wants a new, simple workflow. Thanks for checking it out!
Nikkau 13y ago
Free plan without custom domain is useless, no point to test your service.
- neilmiddleton 13y ago
  I think they would prefer you pay
eCa 13y ago
I think the copy could be improved. The service is obviously not targeted to developers, but several words is: > zip-and-deploy with Forge What's zip? What's deploy? > Uploading and deploying static builds is the way it should be. What's a build? (Yes, there sort of is an explanation underneath, but how do I create a build?) My suggestion would be to make it less technically sounding.
- twanlass 13y ago
  Agreed, though as others have noted, if you're capable enough to build the static site in the first place you probably get the zip & deploy stuff. Forge is probably better off selling this to designers or agencies and giving them some multi-site controls.
OWaz 13y ago
I'm confused by this statement "Your Forge account is billed based on how much bandwidth you use. On our basic plan, if you stay under 10GB each month, you'll only be charged the base rate of $10." Is it that I only pay for what I use or is it a minimum $10/month charge? Right now with https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ (and similar to AWS) I really only pay for what I use. With NFS I deposit money and based on my usage each month money is deducted. Please make it clear if I'm billed on usage or charged a flat rate.
tuananh 13y ago
I'm quite satisfied with Github pages and jekyll.
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  Maybe other people aren't. Maybe they want a more graphical interface. And, I have no idea, but can you use Github Pages with a private repo? Again, I don't know, but if you can't, this doesn't publish the source publicly.
  - nikolaplejic 13y ago
    Isn't your source already public if all you do is host static pages?
    - dkuntz2 13y ago
      Maybe. But you can't make directories that you don't talk about on a public repo, because anyone could go and look at those.
  - tuananh 13y ago
    yes you can use it with private repo.
subpixel 13y ago
Are there advantages over `git push -u origin gh-pages` that I'm missing?
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  You don't have to use git?
  - rch 13y ago
    That's not a feature. Edit to say that it could be a feature, if a number of vcs options were supported, along with non-vcs things like GridFTP and OPeNDAP, etc.
  - subpixel 13y ago
    I feel like I do, personally, but more power to you if others feel otherwise.
    - dkuntz2 13y ago
      You misunderstand me, I like git, but there are lots of people who don't like it, and would much rather be able to do everything with their mouse.
      - subpixel 13y ago
        I get you. But while we're all complaining about this let me point out that I use and love Anvil. Thanks!
        elliottkember 13y ago
        Haha - I was reading through this whole thread and didn't expect that. Glad you like it.
samsnelling 13y ago
Any way I can see some example sites already hosted with Forge? I've been considering using S3+Cloudfront, and this looks like a cleaner solution!
- elliottkember 13y ago
  Sure thing! http://hammerformac.com/ http://hammerformac.com/, http://anvilformac.com http://anvilformac.com and http://riothq.com/ http://riothq.com/ are all hosted on Forge.
yesimahuman 13y ago
Static hosting seems the rage today. The biggest question is whether value can really be added on top of just hosting static assets. I think you can, but it's not going to be easy. Best of luck.
- rch 13y ago
  How about SSL?
bobfunk 13y ago
Too bad their site is down, curious to see it since we just launched BitBalloon https://www.bitballoon.com https://www.bitballoon.com Always interesting to see similar services popping up. Too bad about the downtime...
wildtype 13y ago
"Application Error" i didn't know if a static site is an application..
bnycum 13y ago
Any more info on TurboJS? Is it open source or proprietary? I'm guessing proprietary to set you guys apart. Site is pretty fast and slick. I enjoy both Hammer and Anvil. Plan on building support into the apps for Forge?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
masnick 13y ago
It seems to me like the set of people who (a) can make a static HTML site and (b) can't figure out to use Amazon S3 or GitHub Pages or a traditional host like http://nearlyfreespeech.net http://nearlyfreespeech.net is quite small. But it seems like this is the set of people static hosting services are targeting, or am I missing something? It's worth noting that you can get more or less the same functionality hosting a static site on Amazon S3 with a free CloudFlare account for CDN + JavaScript/CSS minification. Unless your site has tens of thousands of visitors a month, S3 will be essentially free -- it would take a LOT of traffic to cost more than $10/month. Uploading the site to S3 is marginally more difficult than uploading to Forge, but if you can write HTML you can probably use one of the many GUI S3 upload tools. I'm not trying to be a jerk about this -- I'm genuinely curious who the target customer is and how Forge (and similar sites) differentiate themselves from existing services. What problem is Forge solving? (One way Forge is definitely different is great UI design. Props to whoever did their design work!)
- twanlass 13y ago
  I think you're pretty spot on in your analyses though. We use static sites for our landing pages (currently using Jekyll, Grunt & S3) and I can't see a real reason to switch to something like this. From a business standpoint I worry Forge will have a really hard time building a sustainable business off of $10 / month / user. That's a lot of users they'll need to build something profitable. There is likely room here though for add-on services or some unique features. Curious to learn more about TurboJS as well.
  - masnick 13y ago
    Thanks! It's probably also worth noting specifically that CloudFlare offers some JS optimization/preloading features: https://www.cloudflare.com/features-optimizer https://www.cloudflare.com/features-optimizer One is in beta and one is for Pro accounts only.
- elliottkember 13y ago
  Hey there! I'm Forge's lead developer. We're targeting people who want to set up a site, but don't want to set up a server or use Amazon's admin panels. For example, many front-end developers and designers struggle with things like S3 buckets, setting up cloudfront, minifying assets and images, and keeping a version history. If you're a developer like me or you, Forge is useful because it's one less tool that you have to mess with to host your site. Simple, easy, everything in one place. I hate using the S3 admin panel and wanted to build something I'd enjoy using.
husky 13y ago
Sure - developers can access services that are cheaper than this. Outside of HN developers are a minority though and tools like Dropbox took a tech that was available to techies and brought it to the masses. Some pointless comments here kicking a person while they are (or their server is) down - I'll never understand that mentality Congratulations on the launch
- elliottkember 13y ago
  Thanks! We really appreciate your comment.
true_religion 13y ago
I think the cross section of people who want simple hosting, but don't care at all about bandwidth is small. most of the features provided are only useful to developers as well.

19 points by elliottkember 13y ago

I've got two different error messages. The status page has no idea there's anything wrong.

Not a very good first impression. >"This doesn't happen often, but it looks like something is broke." Well, your initial page is broken. >"Hitting the back button and trying again might be your best bet." Nope, didn't work. >"If that doesn't work you can head back to the homepage. " That's the page I'm trying to go to! >"There might be more information on our status page which is reporting All Systems Operational." Yeaah.. No, all systems aren't operational.

elliottkember 13y ago
Sorry about that - it's up and down at the moment. We only just launched and quickly hit our DB limit. We're waiting to upgrade the database until after the initial traffic wears off as it involves taking the site down completely. Rock and a hard place!

lubos 13y ago

The site is either showing error message, loading really really slow or finally fast as advertised. Very inconsistent performance. Staying with Amazon CloudFront for static hosting. One question though, is SSL supported for custom domains? that's the only thing I would be willing to switch from CloudFront for.

elliottkember 13y ago

Sorry everybody! We hit our Heroku database limit unexpectedly. We're hesitant to upgrade while our initial launch traffic hits so are maintaining the site manually. Sites hosted on Forge are elsewhere and performing just fine.

danaw 13y ago
That seems to be a bit short sighted to me. You're turning off potential users because your site is down and you have an easy fix for the problem? Seems like a bad strategy to me...
Kudos 13y ago
I'm torn between upvoting this for visibility and downvoting it for being dumb.
- elliottkember 13y ago
  You can go ahead and downvote it since it's all fixed now. Worse yet, the migration ended up only taking two minutes, so downvote this one while you're at it.
neilmiddleton 13y ago
So you were running on the starter databases? Slick.
midhir 13y ago
Ouch. I've been on the receiving end of Heroku outages during heavy traffic, it's zero craic. But it happens. Give the guys a break lads, it's hard to anticipate this. Still, maybe hosting the static front page on... err.. S3 might've kept it up ;) -Edited for end of day stupidity-

neilmiddleton 13y ago

How's this different/better than S3?

kylec 13y ago

$10/month for 10GB seems really expensive. For example, $5/month for a Digital Ocean VPS includes 1TB transfer. Now, maybe Forge is much faster or more robust, but is it really worth 200x as much per GB?

elliottkember 13y ago
That's 10GB of CDN bandwidth, which is much faster, and geographically distributed.
- resu 13y ago
  It still doesn't make any sense. You can get the same drag and drop deployment with graphical ftp software and 1-click static site deployment. At 1/100th of the cost.

danaw 13y ago

I'm not having an errors accessing the site, however I'm a bit turned off by pricing. $10/m seems steep to me for just hosting static files. I especially don't like that I can't do a git push to deploy updates (breaks my workflow) and having to zip files seems unnecessary. I also don't see any must have features; hosting on a CDN isn't a killer feature and the zip deploy, at least for me, makes it a no go.

elliottkember 13y ago
That's fine - Forge isn't for everybody. Our target market is front-end developers and designers, or anybody who wants a new, simple workflow. Thanks for checking it out!

Nikkau 13y ago

Free plan without custom domain is useless, no point to test your service.

neilmiddleton 13y ago
I think they would prefer you pay

eCa 13y ago

I think the copy could be improved. The service is obviously not targeted to developers, but several words is: > zip-and-deploy with Forge What's zip? What's deploy? > Uploading and deploying static builds is the way it should be. What's a build? (Yes, there sort of is an explanation underneath, but how do I create a build?) My suggestion would be to make it less technically sounding.

twanlass 13y ago
Agreed, though as others have noted, if you're capable enough to build the static site in the first place you probably get the zip & deploy stuff. Forge is probably better off selling this to designers or agencies and giving them some multi-site controls.

OWaz 13y ago

I'm confused by this statement "Your Forge account is billed based on how much bandwidth you use. On our basic plan, if you stay under 10GB each month, you'll only be charged the base rate of $10." Is it that I only pay for what I use or is it a minimum $10/month charge? Right now with https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ (and similar to AWS) I really only pay for what I use. With NFS I deposit money and based on my usage each month money is deducted. Please make it clear if I'm billed on usage or charged a flat rate.

tuananh 13y ago

I'm quite satisfied with Github pages and jekyll.

dkuntz2 13y ago
Maybe other people aren't. Maybe they want a more graphical interface. And, I have no idea, but can you use Github Pages with a private repo? Again, I don't know, but if you can't, this doesn't publish the source publicly.
- nikolaplejic 13y ago
  Isn't your source already public if all you do is host static pages?
  - dkuntz2 13y ago
    Maybe. But you can't make directories that you don't talk about on a public repo, because anyone could go and look at those.
- tuananh 13y ago
  yes you can use it with private repo.

subpixel 13y ago

Are there advantages over `git push -u origin gh-pages` that I'm missing?

dkuntz2 13y ago
You don't have to use git?
- rch 13y ago
  That's not a feature. Edit to say that it could be a feature, if a number of vcs options were supported, along with non-vcs things like GridFTP and OPeNDAP, etc.
- subpixel 13y ago
  I feel like I do, personally, but more power to you if others feel otherwise.
  - dkuntz2 13y ago
    You misunderstand me, I like git, but there are lots of people who don't like it, and would much rather be able to do everything with their mouse.
    - subpixel 13y ago
      I get you. But while we're all complaining about this let me point out that I use and love Anvil. Thanks!
      - elliottkember 13y ago
        Haha - I was reading through this whole thread and didn't expect that. Glad you like it.

samsnelling 13y ago

Any way I can see some example sites already hosted with Forge? I've been considering using S3+Cloudfront, and this looks like a cleaner solution!

elliottkember 13y ago
Sure thing! http://hammerformac.com/ http://hammerformac.com/, http://anvilformac.com http://anvilformac.com and http://riothq.com/ http://riothq.com/ are all hosted on Forge.

yesimahuman 13y ago

Static hosting seems the rage today. The biggest question is whether value can really be added on top of just hosting static assets. I think you can, but it's not going to be easy. Best of luck.

rch 13y ago
How about SSL?

bobfunk 13y ago

Too bad their site is down, curious to see it since we just launched BitBalloon https://www.bitballoon.com https://www.bitballoon.com Always interesting to see similar services popping up. Too bad about the downtime...

wildtype 13y ago

"Application Error" i didn't know if a static site is an application..

bnycum 13y ago

Any more info on TurboJS? Is it open source or proprietary? I'm guessing proprietary to set you guys apart. Site is pretty fast and slick. I enjoy both Hammer and Anvil. Plan on building support into the apps for Forge?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

masnick 13y ago

It seems to me like the set of people who (a) can make a static HTML site and (b) can't figure out to use Amazon S3 or GitHub Pages or a traditional host like http://nearlyfreespeech.net http://nearlyfreespeech.net is quite small. But it seems like this is the set of people static hosting services are targeting, or am I missing something? It's worth noting that you can get more or less the same functionality hosting a static site on Amazon S3 with a free CloudFlare account for CDN + JavaScript/CSS minification. Unless your site has tens of thousands of visitors a month, S3 will be essentially free -- it would take a LOT of traffic to cost more than $10/month. Uploading the site to S3 is marginally more difficult than uploading to Forge, but if you can write HTML you can probably use one of the many GUI S3 upload tools. I'm not trying to be a jerk about this -- I'm genuinely curious who the target customer is and how Forge (and similar sites) differentiate themselves from existing services. What problem is Forge solving? (One way Forge is definitely different is great UI design. Props to whoever did their design work!)

twanlass 13y ago
I think you're pretty spot on in your analyses though. We use static sites for our landing pages (currently using Jekyll, Grunt & S3) and I can't see a real reason to switch to something like this. From a business standpoint I worry Forge will have a really hard time building a sustainable business off of $10 / month / user. That's a lot of users they'll need to build something profitable. There is likely room here though for add-on services or some unique features. Curious to learn more about TurboJS as well.
- masnick 13y ago
  Thanks! It's probably also worth noting specifically that CloudFlare offers some JS optimization/preloading features: https://www.cloudflare.com/features-optimizer https://www.cloudflare.com/features-optimizer One is in beta and one is for Pro accounts only.
elliottkember 13y ago
Hey there! I'm Forge's lead developer. We're targeting people who want to set up a site, but don't want to set up a server or use Amazon's admin panels. For example, many front-end developers and designers struggle with things like S3 buckets, setting up cloudfront, minifying assets and images, and keeping a version history. If you're a developer like me or you, Forge is useful because it's one less tool that you have to mess with to host your site. Simple, easy, everything in one place. I hate using the S3 admin panel and wanted to build something I'd enjoy using.

husky 13y ago

Sure - developers can access services that are cheaper than this. Outside of HN developers are a minority though and tools like Dropbox took a tech that was available to techies and brought it to the masses. Some pointless comments here kicking a person while they are (or their server is) down - I'll never understand that mentality Congratulations on the launch

elliottkember 13y ago
Thanks! We really appreciate your comment.

true_religion 13y ago

I think the cross section of people who want simple hosting, but don't care at all about bandwidth is small. most of the features provided are only useful to developers as well.