
Ask HN: What web hosting do you use for your personal sites/blogs? - nthnclrk
Just looking for a simple host, with really great performance. As the title implies, it's for a simple static site/blog (likely using Jekyll).<p>I'm sceptical of the much hyped Media Temple offering, and definitely don't want to hand over cash to GoDaddy.
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ohashi
Disclaimer: It's my startup.

<http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare>

We track what people are saying about web hosting companies on Twitter to see
who people are happiest with. It's not a perfect system but what we're trying
to do is create an objective and transparent way to compare these companies
which I felt this industry truly lacked. Maybe it will help you compare some
of your options, we track Media Temple
(<http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/23/mediatemple/>) and GoDaddy
(<http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/34/godaddy/>) as well as many
other big companies mentioned in the comments (Linode, Heroku, RackSpace, ASO,
etc).

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whichdan
Cool site. I remember you from WebHostingTalk :)

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hacknat
If you are using Wordpress or another PHP based CMS then NearlyFreeSpeech.Net
can't be beat.

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dmuth
Seconded. NearlyFreeSpeech is dirt cheap for hosting PHP-based products.

And they'll stand up to censorious governments:
[http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2012/10/06/official-uk-
gove...](http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2012/10/06/official-uk-government-
attempt-at-censorship/)

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sparkinson
No need to spend a whole load of cash if it's only personal.

Check out <http://www.lowendbox.com/> for some dirt cheap VPS deals and guides
on how to configure a limited resource server if you're new to it.

I currently use two providers I found from there, 3 containers in total.
Having more that one allows me to simply switch if a host goes down.

(For a static site, it can be quite fun to see how much you can squeeze out of
64MB of ram.)

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DigitalSea
I used to be with Media Temple and I never really had an issues using them, it
was their Grid Server offering and pretty decent for the price. After a while
I yearned for more control and power, so I moved to a 512mb Linode VPS plan
which including their excellent backup plan costs me $25 per month. I host
around 12 sites (mostly Wordpress sites) and it can handle everything that has
been thrown at it thus far.

Keep in kind a managed VPS plan from Linode means no Cpanel or fancy control
panel so everything needs to be done via the command line. Perfect if you want
to better understand Linux and learn command line commands. The backup service
is a separate offering that's $5 per month and I highly recommend it as you'll
most likely destroy a few VM instances before you get the hang of how to
configure things like server requests and email.

From my experience Linode is definitely one of the best and cheap. It's
perfect bridging hosting between shared hosting and expensive cloud based
dedicated VM hosting like EC2. Rackspace is also pretty good, I have friends
who swear by them but can't say anything about them really as I've never used
them.

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nkorth
Do you have any tips for setting up a new VPS? I just got one recently. I know
my way around Apache, but I've never run a mail server before, so I'm
reluctant to move my domain until I know that I won't miss any emails in the
process. (I'm using Ubuntu Server 12.04)

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DigitalSea
My knowledge of command line Linux was pretty limited to changing ownership of
files, using wget and configuring Apache but like yourself my knowledge of
setting up email and whatnot was flaky.

Fortunately, you're in luck. I learned everything about managing a VPS from
Linode's own excellent documentation. This is the guide I used for setting up
mail: [http://library.linode.com/email/postfix/gateway-
ubuntu-10.10...](http://library.linode.com/email/postfix/gateway-
ubuntu-10.10-maverick) — bit out of date, but still relevant I am pretty sure
and worked for me when I needed it.

~~~
nkorth
Thanks, that will be very helpful.

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dholowiski
Mine is on Heroku, but that's because i've written my own blogging software
and that's not what you are asking for.

I'd go with a VPS, then it will be a learning experience as well (if that's
what you want) and you can use it for other things and play around with new
stuff. Prgmr, Linode, EC2 (A reserved micro instance is dirt cheap). If you
just want to host a site, I've also had a great experience with Hostgator,
although YMMV.

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nmcfarl
I use S3 directly (+ Route53) for my static sites, with EC2 micro instances
for things that need a CPU. Previously I used Linode and was happy, but when I
decided to cut administrative overhead, and go with just one vendor I went
with amazon.

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michaelkscott
If it's static HTML, you can use Github Pages.

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nthnclrk
This is actually a great idea. I hadn't looked into this as I have no need for
code hosting/project management — but using Pages makes a lot of sense. And of
course, Jekyll & Markdown support. Thanks!

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miles
Rackspace Cloud Servers[1] (formerly Slicehost) with a basic Ubuntu install
and nginx. I also use it for a simple static site and blog (still running
Blosxom!). Has been rock solid for years.

EDIT: I second the NearlyFreeSpeech.Net recommendation if shared hosting is OK
(as opposed to a VPS with static IP, etc). NFS has been very dependable in my
experience.

[1] <http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/>

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jameswyse
These days I'm mostly building one-page style sites (usually with AngularJS)
paired with an API server (usually in node.js) so I tend to host these
separately. I've got apps running on Heroku and I'm also keen to see if I can
get better performance from AppFog so I might try that out soon. For static
files I've been using Amazon S3 with either Cloudfront or Cloudflare.

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devendramistri
AppFog. This is free till 2GM RAM limit. I am running my Django site
www.mistrics.com on it.

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hackerboos
I use a dirt cheap $15/month OVH dedicated server running Nginx, Unicorn and
Postgres.

Software wise I use Rails deployed with Capistrano for most projects and
Octopress for my blog as there's no need for blogs to be dynamic in my case.

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needcaffeine
I have a Jekyll blog that I host on S3 and CloudFront, with DNS hosted on
Route 53. Anything more than that is overkill (and possibly a waste of money).
Heck, even the CloudFront bit is not necessary.

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hilti
All my static and newLisp based sites are hosted on a Raspberry Pi. The Pi has
enough power to handle blogs or small traffic sites. I use no-ip.org to get a
static address for the Pi at home.

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dholowiski
Unless I'm missing something, no-ip gives you a DNS name mapped to your
dynamic IP address, it doesn't give you a static address.

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swanson
If you are using Jekyll, Github Pages is a no-brainer. Free, fast, and Jekyll
works out of the box.

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natsu90
I'm using Heroku free plan.

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npguy
I use ASO, their customer support has been great in my experience

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amac
Blogger. It's always up and does everything I need it to.

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Avalaxy
You can use Azure Websites. It's free and works awesome.

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ankitaggarwal
NearlyFreeSpeech. Costs me ~ $2 a month.

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redegg
RamNode.

