Comment on Do you selfhost your own blog/website?

• JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I have some static sites that I just rsync to my VPS and serve using Nginx. That’s definitely a good option.

  Agree. And hard to get security wrong cos no database.

  If you want to make it faster by using a CDN and don’t want it to be too hard to set up, you’re going to have to use a CDN service.

  Yes but this can just be a drop-in frontend for the VPS. Point the domain to Cloudflare and tell only Cloudflare where to find the site. This provides IP privacy and also TLS without having to deal with LetsEncrypt. It’s not ideal because… Cloudflare… but at least you’re using standard web tools. To ditch Cloudflare you just unplug them at the domain and you still have a website.

  Perhaps its irrational but I’m bothered by how many people seem to think that Github Pages is the only way to host a static website. I know that’s not your case.

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  • dan@upvote.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    That’s not Cloudflare-specific; you can use any CDN that supports origin pull in the same way :)

    It’s not ideal because… Cloudflare… but at least you’re using standard web tools. To ditch Cloudflare you just unplug them at the domain and you still have a website.

    Definitely agree with this! That’s one of the pain points of “cloud” services - they really try to lock you in, making it impossible to swotch.

    without having to deal with LetsEncrypt.

    You still need encryption between your CDN and your origin, ideally using a proper certificate. Let’s Encrypt (and other ACME services like ZeroSSL) are pretty easy to use, and can be fully automated. I’m using Let’s Encrypt even for internal servers on my network, using a DNS challenge for verification instead of a HTTP one.

    Perhaps its irrational but I’m bothered by how many people seem to think that Github Pages is the only way to host a static website

    It’s strange because out of all the possible options, Github Pages is the most basic. You have to store your generated files in a Git repo (which is kinda gross) and it barely supports any features. For example, it doesn’t support server logs or redirects.

    I guess it’s popular because people already use Github and don’t want to look for other services?

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    • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      You still need encryption between your CDN and your origin, ideally using a proper certificate.

      It can be self-signed though, that’s what I’m doing and it’s partly to outsource the TLS maintenance. But the main reason I’m doing it is to get IP privacy. WHOIS domain privacy is fine, but to me it seems pretty sub-optimal for a personal site to be publicly associated with even a permanent IP address. A VPS is meant to be private, it’s in the name. This is something that doesn’t get talked about much. I don’t see any way to achieve this without a CDN, unfortunately.

      I guess it’s popular because people already use Github and don’t want to look for other services?

      Yes, and the general confusion between Git and Github, and between public things and private things. It’s everywhere today. Another example: saying “my Substack” as if blogging was just invented by this private company. So it’s worse than just laziness IMO. It’s a reflexive trusting of the private over the public.

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      • dan@upvote.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        it seems pretty sub-optimal for a personal site to be publicly associated with even a permanent IP address

        What’s the downside you see from having a static IP address?

        I don’t see any way to achieve this without a CDN, unfortunately.

        I think you’re looking for a reverse proxy. CDNs are essentially reverse proxies with edge caching (their main feature is that they cache files on servers that are closer to a user), but it sounds like you don’t really care about the caching for your use case?

        I don’t know if any companies provide reverse proxies without a CDN though.

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