static web hosting

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static web hosting is a web hosting service (AKA static hosting or file hosting) that only supports serving static files for a web site, is often more reliable, cheaper (some are free), a good way for web developers to get started on the IndieWeb, and used by many community members.

Why

Advantages

• Very cheap (sometimes free). See Amazon Date Edge's usage/billing.
• Solutions like GitHub Pages and Netlify integrate well with standard source control operations. When you push a commit to GitHub, tools like Pages and Netlify automatically update your site.

Disadvantages

• Can be complicated to set up
• Require external services for dynamic functions such as receiving Webmentions, publishing with Micropub, etc.

IndieWeb Examples

IndieWeb community members using this approach:

• Christophe Ducamp (JAMStack GitHub + Netlify's CDN) (settings here)
•   Jamie Tanna hosts www.jvt.me on Netlify, which was previously hosted on his own infrastructure
• User:Tomasparks.name I use Linode's s3 and backblaze_b2.
• Armando Cordova hosts (corlaez.com) on (render.com)
• pcarrier.com runs xmit.co and hosts most things there

Static web hosting services

GitHub Pages

• GitHub Pages (free) - GitHub Pages is designed for hosting simple static web pages. In addition to github's instructions, there are several guides on how to use GitHub Pages to host your website:
  • Based on Jekyll
  • http://opentechschool.github.io/social-coding/extras/github-pages.html
  • Example: BootStrap blog powered by Jekyll and Github pages
  • An advantage to using a Github based solution is that you can easily transfer it to another web host simply by deploying from github to your web host.
• GitHub Actions give you control over when and how your website deploys. You can schedule your site to be deployed at a particular time. This is useful if you have posts written for future dates on your Jekyll blog.

GitLab Pages

GitLab supports static site hosting with GitLab Pages, supporting custom domains and SSL.

Available on gitlab.com and self-hosted services.

Amazon S3

• Amazon S3 (very cheap): instructions (via [1]).

Google Cloud Platform

• Static hosting can be done using Cloud Storage service.

Netlify

• Netlify (free) - Supports various static site generators: Jekyll, Grunt, Middleman, Hexo, Hugo, Gatsby

Azure

• Azure Storage offers static website hosting with support for custom domains. For more details, see Static website hosting in Azure Storage and What is Azure Static Web Apps?

Azure Advantages

• See advantages for all "static domain hosting"
• Provides detailed deployment logs which gives visibility into how a site has been deployed
• Easy-to-navigate onboarding flow

Vercel

• Vercel (free) - Supports custom domains SSL and integration with GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. Can be used with Next.js, Eleventy, Jekyll, Grunt, Nuxt, Angular, Vue, Hexo, Hugo, Gatsby and several (others). (Vercel is using Amazon Web Services)

Linode

Linode/Akamai offers S3-compatible object storage that supports static websites.

DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean's App Platform can be used to deploy static websites from a GitHub repository.

Previous Examples

Dropbox

• As of 2017 Dropbox can no longer be used to host static websites. See the main article for more information.

See Also

• web hosting