
Show HN: Staticland – Open source static site hosting with SSL via Let's Encrypt - sethvincent
https://static.land
======
phpnode
This looks like a nice idea but it's a bit unfortunate about the name clash
with [https://github.com/rpominov/static-
land](https://github.com/rpominov/static-land)

Edit: Dear downvoters, normally it'd be unlikely for the name clash to matter,
but because these are both JS libraries, both available on npm, it's the
difference between `npm install static-land` and `npm install staticland`
which would be an easy mistake for anyone to make.

~~~
minitech
From rpominov/static-land’s README:

    
    
      Pros  
      
      - No name clashes.

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bosdev
Another alternative is to deploy to S3/Cloudfront using Stout
([http://stout.is](http://stout.is)).

~~~
andersonmvd
Amazing. I've been using s3_website (1.4k stars) and it works great w/ Jekyll
and CloudFront as well:
[https://github.com/laurilehmijoki/s3_website](https://github.com/laurilehmijoki/s3_website)

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sheraz
Clever :-) Glad to see another solution out there!

Myelf -- I've migrated almost all personal and small projects over to a self-
hosted dokku instance. All of the static sites run this buildpack:
[https://github.com/dokku/buildpack-nginx](https://github.com/dokku/buildpack-
nginx)

This has been a real timesaver as dealing with S3 static sites was just a
pain. Added bonus is I have more granular control of nginx (if I want it)

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> This has been a real timesaver as dealing with S3 static sites was just a
> pain.

Excuse my ignorance but what's the issue with S3 static sites? I have a couple
I was going to put up shortly and was planning on using S3.

~~~
sheraz
Mainly this:

    
    
      * the login to aws.
      * Then creating S3 keys with the right security settings.
      * Then tweaking the settings to serve pages
      * Then setting up SSL with letsencrypt (I have not looked it up, but I'm pretty sure it is possible)
      * Then configuring CORS if you need it (again, possible with S3)
    

In the end it just came down to workflow. I never really enjoyed working with
AWS on command-line or automation. I much prefer the push-to-deploy workflow
pioneered by Heroku and adapted/cloned with Dokku.

~~~
bjacobel
Just a note on your point about S3 and Letsencrypt: AWS has their own tool for
free provisioning of TLS certificates, which is all integrated in a very nice
way if you put your S3 bucket behind Cloudfront (which is a good idea). Search
the console for the AWS Certificate Manager.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Right this is what I was planning on using. I may still give it a shot, not
entirely sure. For static sites I just want something quick and cheap.

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toddmorey
Netlify is a good option, too, with continuous deployment and SSL. It's free
for open source projects.

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xs
Is this primarily for static sites like Jekyll and Hugo? If so, could you add
some kind of tutorial on how to get my Jekyll blog hosted on static.land? I'm
not familiar with node, and your docs don't mention how to do a `git push`,
only `staticland deploy`. What is the technology behind `staticland deploy`,
git, ftp, https?

~~~
sethvincent
The deploy command is https. staticland doesn't use git at all, just deals
with the built site produced by whatever static site generator you use.

I'll add some examples to the docs! Thanks for pointing that out.

For jekyll, the short version is you can do something like this:

> jekyll build

> staticland _site/ yourdomain.tld

~~~
sintaxi
+1

Author of surge.sh here. Just want to add my support for the compile locally
paradigm over sending to a service to be built. Far less complexity. Far more
predictable.

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nathancahill
Looks just like Surge.sh with free SSL.

~~~
dimgl
I wouldn't recommend Surge.sh. We've experienced a lot of downtime in
production and we switched off of it.

~~~
sintaxi
I'm sorry you had a poor experience. Our downtime was very unfortunate. FWIW -
It was quite some time ago and we have not had downtime since. Of the three
occasions we had downtime two were due to our infrastructure provider taking
our network down in error over invalid takedown requests and we had to fend of
a DDoS the other time. I hope we can earn your trust again and you give surge
a shot again in the future.

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jorde
I recently started using `now`[0] for hosting my static and small scale sites.
While it's mainly targeted for Node apps /JS, it supports deploying static
sites out of the box which free and very easy DNS, SSL setup. It's not free,
but still very affordable compared to the benefits.

[0] [https://zeit.co/now](https://zeit.co/now)

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isoos
Another alternative in this space is an AWS Lambda-driven static site editor
and publisher:
[https://github.com/sirceljm/LambdaBlogPlatform](https://github.com/sirceljm/LambdaBlogPlatform)

(not affiliated but I know that the author put lot of thought in it)

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libeclipse
Seems like a cool project. I've got a site setup[0] like this already, where
netlify pulls the files from github and then serves them from its CDN with A+
HTTPS+HSTS. Works flawlessly.

[0] [https://libeclipse.me](https://libeclipse.me)

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johnchristopher
But where are the files hosted ?

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TazeTSchnitzel
Is it just as simple to use if you host it yourself? Static site hosting
locally with TLS ought to be as simple as two commands.

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CptnZur
Very nice work.

~~~
sethvincent
Thanks!

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wodenokoto
Do I need NPM to use this?

~~~
sethvincent
Yes. I'll add a note to the site about that. Installing the staticland
command-line tool is `npm install -g staticland`

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bryanrasmussen
what's the monetization strategy?

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sethvincent
Static site hosting is cheap, and I'm not super interested in competing with
other services with per-site costs. staticland is primarily an open source
project that I use for my own purposes, and I'm open to building out static
site deployment projects that fit a company's specific use case based on
staticland.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
ok thanks, so have you gotten any interest from companies? Asking because I
need to host my static sites somewhere soon but don't want to go somewhere
that won't stick around a long time.

~~~
sethvincent
So far not much interest, but this post is also the first time I've done any
significant promotion. If you want to go with a really solid static site
hosting company netlify.com seems like a great choice. You could also always
set up a staticland-api server on your own. Right now I'm using static.land
for 12+ of my own sites that I rely on and more on the way, so it's not going
anywhere.

