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6 Comments

Starting a web app - streamlined approach?

Hey guys,

Is there a single place to buy a domain/ssl/hosting, set up a web app and a marketing website? This way, instead of having to have 3 or more different places for a single site, I can just focus on one.

I found Netlify, from browsing previous posts: https://www.netlify.com/blog/2018/06/19/buy-and-secure-a-custom-domain-through-netlify/

Does that allow me to do all of the above? I've also heard of Zeit and Github pages - do these do the same thing? And what's the downsides of this? Just cost?

As I'm learning to code, it seems quite cumbersome to set up a web app (from what I've learnt so far).

I need to:

  • buy hosting
  • buy a domain
  • point it in cPanel to the file repo
  • buy a SSL
  • setup a repo somewhere (github?)
    etc etc.

I'm thinking of how this can be simpler.

Sorry for the noob question, still learning and just want to be efficient.

Thank you!

  1. 1

    What are your apps? If they are simple landing pages or basic websites you can host all of them on a single server, so you only have to buy the domains and point to the correct location on that server. If one of the apps starts getting bigger you can then move it to its own server(s).

  2. 1

    What language or framework do you intend to use? Netlify and Zeit let you serve your site statically (no server, served from a CDN basically), as well as have simple serverless functions written in JS which you can use as API endpoints. No messing with servers or buying a SSL cert.

    1. 1

      JavaScript, and probably vue.js. Do they support vue?

      Is the term 'serverless' what I should be referring to in the future, when I talk about a system that can take care of all the above?

      1. 1

        Yup, they support any frontend framework like Vue. Hosts that use the term “serverless” are generally referring to hosting that hides all the complexity of managing servers. I think these days most also give you an ssl cert automatically, at least Zeit does.

        1. 1

          Gotcha, thanks Gabe. There's a lot to try understand! I'm assuming the downside is cost (for the convenience)?

          How do you handle your setups?

          1. 1

            Serverless can often end up being way cheaper because there is no constantly running server you're paying for. It just charges you by request. For example Zeit charges $0.04 per 100,000 requests.

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