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Setting up a small site for cheap

  1. #1
    SBTlauien African Astronaut
    If I current have a domain name registered, how can I set up a very small website using the domain name, along with an email server that uses the domain name, for the cheapest price possible?

    I currently it registered using NOIP. I don't think I'll need any server side scripting, just a static page. But I will need email service.
  2. #2
    You should go with shared hosting, and get a wordpress install. Bluehost is usually pretty good, but you're talking $100 a year or so.
  3. #3
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    A cheapy VPS will run you like $5 a month, think you can get that on ramnode which is reasonable but not great. Should be enough to run a site and your own SMTP server and cubemail or whatever that thing is called. It's a lot of admin work and email may be a little tricky given the politics of spam and entrant SMTP hosts.

    Better option but costs a little more is the cheapy VPS for your web/app server and pay fastmail or a similar service to do the email for you.
  4. #4
  5. #5
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    oh hi Enter
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  6. #6
    SBTlauien African Astronaut
    So when signing up for RamNode, what do I put in the 'Hostname' box? Is that where I'd put the domain name that I own(like "SBT.com")?

    Also, who is a chicken, Enter?
  7. #7
    NARCassist gollums fat coach
    i'm currently doing something very similar, setting up a website for a business. we're going with paid protonmail accounts which will enable us to put the company web domain as the @protonmail.com part and keeping all the smtp shit very simple indeed. i can't remember how much it was now for the protonmail accounts but it was fucking cheap. like $6 a month or summing silly.

    anyway, i'd be interested with which solution you put in place, and when i put the company website up i will be more than happy to let you know what we decided to go with and why. ours is simple like yours, no ecommerce solutions or anything. just giving the company a simple web presence for now. you know, so they don't look like fucking amateurs and that.



    .
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  8. #8
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    Hostname is the computer's internal name. It doesn't really mean anything externally, it's just how the system will refer to itself and typically how you'd talk about it. Many sysadmins pick names according to themes, we used to do characters from a movie at my last job, had a professor who named servers after different fruits.
  9. #9
    SBTlauien African Astronaut
    NOIP is a service that allows me to forward traffic. I can forward SMTP traffic as well. Will I basically just be forwarding traffic my servers ip? Also, I don't see anything on RamNode that mentions SMTP. Will I just set up the mail server on the system I get and then forward traffic to it?
  10. #10
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    You typically wouldn't use something like No-IP with with a VPS like ramnode because you have a static IP address, there's no need for a dynamic DNS setup. Ramnode just gives you a server, like a machine, with no public services like mail or a website running by default. You need to alter your DNS records to point your domain and MAIL record to that server, then set up an SMTP server.
  11. #11
    SBTlauien African Astronaut
    But I registered at NOIP back when I needed the service.

    Will it still work?
  12. #12
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    Yeah, I guess.

    Is your domain registered through NOIP?
  13. #13
    SBTlauien African Astronaut
    Yeah, its through NOIP.
  14. #14
    SBTlauien African Astronaut
    I'm up and running. I did the $3.50 deal and got a VPS. Then I just redirected traffic using NOIP, from my domain to my Ramnode servers IP. After the redirect though, it shows the ip rather than my domain name, but it's not a big deal.

    Thanks fam.
  15. #15
    -SpectraL coward [the spuriously bluish-lilac bushman]
    Better and easier to simply just host everything right off your own box.
  16. #16
    SBTlauien African Astronaut
    Originally posted by -SpectraL Better and easier to simply just host everything right off your own box.

    Yeah, but I have a prepaid phone that I use for my main internet. Aside from that, I use this ISP's free hot trial service that I get unlimited my changing my MAC address, but I can't host off of it(aside from TOR services).

    This is actually really cheap.
  17. #17
    -SpectraL coward [the spuriously bluish-lilac bushman]
    Originally posted by SBTlauien Yeah, but I have a prepaid phone that I use for my main internet. Aside from that, I use this ISP's free hot trial service that I get unlimited my changing my MAC address, but I can't host off of it(aside from TOR services).

    This is actually really cheap.

    Do they actually still block certain ports/service running off your ISP, or do they let you and then bitch at you later?
  18. #18
    aldra JIDF Controlled Opposition
    Originally posted by -SpectraL Do they actually still block certain ports/service running off your ISP, or do they let you and then bitch at you later?

    a lot of phone service providers provide 'internet access' through an upstream proxy so that only certain protocols will work, and they can cache popular static content (ie. layout items for facebook, youpube etc.) to free up bandwidth and give the illusion of speed
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  19. #19
    Rivotril Houston
    A question: doesn't Docker is good with small site hosting?
  20. #20
    aldra JIDF Controlled Opposition
    Docker is just an application container, ie. you can set up Docker on a VPS but it just adds an extra layer of complexity.

    Typically you'd use Docker in a situation where you wanted to run a bunch of different applications each in their own environment, or if you were running different builds of the same application isolated from one another
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