

Ask HN: Amazon web services for static web site? - atarian

Hello HN,<p>I'm building a really basic website with some lightweight Javascript for a small business and am mostly expecting traffic from SEO or by word so nothing crazy like a Slashdot/HN effect.<p>Taking this into consideration, would it be more cost-effective to have the website hosted on Amazon? I'm predicting large periods of time where people won't be visiting the site, so I feel like going with a traditional dedicated host would be a waste.<p>Thanks!
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rdouble
If it's totally static you can just host it on S3 and it costs pennies per
month. Here is a how to:

[http://thechrisoshow.com/2011/06/05/how-to-host-a-static-
web...](http://thechrisoshow.com/2011/06/05/how-to-host-a-static-website-
on-s3/)

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atarian
Thanks for that link!

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heynk
The last project I did was all client side, so I hosted it on AWS. So far I
really like it, its extremely simple and cheap. The only trip-up I had was
that the server wasn't correctly serving .js and .css files through root
directory, like you would think you do in website mode.

The quick-fix hack was to instead point to the direct link like
src="s3.amazonaws.com/soundcloudinstant.com/jq.js" instead of the normal
src="jq.js".

app at <http://soundcloudinstant.com>

edit: formatting errors

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blakdawg
It's not clear which parts of AWS you're thinking of using.

If the Javascript is client-side only, then you could host this on a
combination of S3/Cloudfront pretty easily.

A full EC2 instance seems like overkill if this is a simple static site - I
would look at traditional webhosting, or a small VPS instead, if you don't
like the S3/Cloudfront approach.

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atarian
Sorry I should have clarified. I meant S3 for just hosting. Haven't heard of
CloudFront before so I'll take a look at that. Thanks.

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dangrossman
What's wrong with the standard $3-a-month shared hosting service for this? Is
a managed environment and phone support not worth $3 a month to this business?

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atarian
Well it's not necessarily a web business. It's more of a traditional brick-
and-mortar business and they just want a page to make a web presence.

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dangrossman
Right, shared web hosting is what 99% of brick-and-mortar businesses have.

