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Where to host your projects / hosting / personal website

Last updated: September 3, 2023

This is in the works! Would you like to help flesh it out? Let's do it!

Some options

This will depend on WHAT you are hosting.

  1. You have HTML but don't use Git yet

    Well, the PE Projects server, right? 😉

    But eventually, you’ll want your own server.

    Any host that gives you an IP address and a user login for FTP will let you transfer files to the server.

    Over the years, we’ve used GoDaddy, HostGator, Bluehost, and 15 others — which we would NOT recommend. Stay away from them! They are terrible companies. (but many of us already paid for 2 years of hosting through them… so, maybe ride it out if that’s the case)

    Companies who haven’t screwed us (yet) are:

    • NearlyFreeSpeech (Kinda unique – need more info) (LAMP)
    • Digital Ocean (more of a do-it-yourself via command line type) (whatever you make of it)
    • Green Geeks (Classic C-panel style hosting) (LAMP) (this can probably be set up to have many WP sites too)

  2. You have HTML and use Git and the command line

    …

    Options:

    • Neflify or Surge (Free static site hosting via github commit or command-line command to push) (no LAMP)
    • (and the options in the previous section can likely be configured to work with Git)

  3. You have PHP and need a MAMP/LAMP stack

    Notes about what you need and why… how much money to expect to pay etc…

    Companies who haven’t screwed us (yet) are:

  4. You want to host PHP sites and WordPress sites and probably more than one

    …

    We’ve really enjoyed this combo:

    • Digital Ocean (more of a do-it-yourself via command line type) (whatever you make of it) ($10 a month)
    • SpinupWP (an admin panel that administers Digital Ocean droplets / and allows you to put many sites on one server) ($12 a month) (get $50 of Spinup credit with this link: https://spinupwp.com/?referral=zB9r0Bo5vb

    You might be able to get a $5 a month droplet. But for WP sites, they usually push you toward the $10 a month site. That’s Digital Ocean – and you’d set it up via Spinup. Also – you can have site backups for a couple of extra bucks.

    So, count on spending $20 a month at least. But you can basically host “unlimited” amounts of sites here. However! We recommend that you put your client sites on their own server – so you aren’t responsible for them – or you charge a minimum of $20 a month to maintain their sites on your server.

  5. You have a JavaScript app

    …

    Will come back to this –

Some walkthroughs

Remember to break this down into steps and concepts and not just follow along. Hosts and DNS and the command and the admin panels and the interfaces will all vary and change often.
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