
Bootstrapping a site builder to $6k in monthly revenue - ChanningAllen
https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/pagestead-bd9c0f4f54
======
tmikaeld
Just like the free and open source Microweber[1] , site-builders with a PHP
back-end seem to be very slow [2].

I've asked the guys at Microweber about it and it's due to HTML parsing being
slow with PHP.

I'm curious why no one chooses Golang or Elixir as a backend?

[1] [https://microweber.com](https://microweber.com) [2]
[https://support.sbpro.io/forums/topic/how-to-lower-
resource-...](https://support.sbpro.io/forums/topic/how-to-lower-resource-
usage)

~~~
manuelflara
Probably because a PHP "app" can be installed in the vast majority of
hostings' super easily, while Golang and Elixir would take a lot more effort
for the average user (even if technically savvy).

~~~
tmikaeld
If you'd know how to build a site builder using Golang or Elixir, you'd
probably know how to make an installer as well.

~~~
stevenicr
My knowledge of Elxir is the little I learned at a 3 hour meetup showing how
to build a basic chat app, I am looking forward to learning more about it, and
similar languages.

I wonder if most shared hosting plans would ever allow these kinds of
installers to run if they were made. I've been told on occasions by different
hosts that we would need to move up to a vps to even change some settings with
php ini and such.

Even with a VPS I have had hosts say that we can't run certain kinds of apps,
and that we would be throttles with cpu limits and if they were constantly hit
then we'd be given the option to move to dedicated server or move away from
the host.

So I think a lot of the easy hosting out there may not be ready for things
that take installers aside from some basic php things like wordpress (which
gets us rate limited with some plugins / hosts)

I understand that it may be trivial for some people to spin up a DO droplet
kind of thing and install dependencies, but even if newer web site makers can
do these things, maintaining these systems with updates and security is not
for the average one-click web site installer.

So it's a big issue for other reasons too I think.

~~~
tmikaeld
Even with Wordpress, no shared host will allow you to have more than 1-2 page
views per second without Caching active. This is due to CPU consumption being
so high even with just 10 plugins.

When it comes to VPS, only the KVM based will allow you to use the full CPU
cores since you cannot overprovision it, you can only assign the available
cores until they run out.

With OpenVZ or LXC containers, you can have hundreds or even thousands of
containers on a single server and have it overprovisioned. This means that you
only need a few containers to use much CPU to run out of capacity.

There's certainly not much to it to have an installer make the install and
maintain updates, even with bash this is just 5 commands at the most for
updating a Golang app - not sure about Elixir though.

------
stef25
Unrelated to the actual project, I wonder how this guy manages to live in
Thailand and openly discuss his earnings.

Plenty of "entrepreneurs" / backpackers / dive masters "live" in Thailand but
all need to do visa runs, which is technically not allowed and certainly not
while working there and probably paying no taxes on that openly declared
revenue.

There aren't many options at all to work in Thailand as a freelancer for 10+
years unless you're dumping lots of money in to the country.

Not making judgements about right / wrong, just that it's most likely not
legal.

Also - CodeIgniter is an interesting choice for such an app.

~~~
moltar
Maybe he had married a local and is now fully legal?

------
thedangler
How is this different from [http://grapesjs.com/](http://grapesjs.com/)

~~~
giarc
That's like asking, how is "MS Word different than LibreOffice". Some people
want to build their company on the backs of paid software. User preference
really.

Pagestead also appears to have pre-built components for your users to build
off of.

