cheap / free hosting for light self-teaching?

[Soen Eber]

I'm looking to mess around with a few SL/HPPT and low resource web dev projects to get my toes wet with "real" environments instead of virtual hosting off my PC. Can anyone recommend anyone who's not going to load me down advertising? I'd like to spend under $5/month, and keep things fairly lightweight. I've worked with UNIX/LINUX so I won't need a lot of handholding or <air quotes>help</air quotes>. I'd need a backend database and be able to spin up whatever backend tools I'd need for development.

Thanks.

 

[Chalice Yao]

You could try https://www.hetzner.com/cloud?country=us which gives you a virtual cloud server with 2 CPUs, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB disk and 20 TB (lol) outgoing traffic for arrouuund 4.50 a month. US location, too. ("CPX11")

Note: The price is the *max* price you pay a month - the 'hourly rate' is what you pay per hour the server exists, up to that maximum price, and if you delete it again earlier, you pay less. If you keep that server for only half a month it's like 2.55 or something.

 

[Free]

Chalice's suggestion is a good one.

If 'free' works for you..Heroku used to offer a nice collection of services at a free tier but that's gone now. However there's still Render, and there are some who offer mostly free with dirt cheap per minute costs on things like compute cycles and whatnot. If you can navigate the various restrictions, you can get a pretty good set of free resources from the likes of Amazon, Google and Microsoft (Azure).

Here is a github that tracks tons of different SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and so on that offer free/dev tiers:

GitHub - ripienaar/free-for-dev: A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev

A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev - ripienaar/free-for-dev

github.com

 

[Noodles]

I have used Digital Ocean for a VPS for years now. Probably over a decade now. They have a $5/month tier I believe.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

What percentage of this forum are web developers??? lol. Seems like a lot of it. I've done just about every kind of development other than web... (not counting classes)

 

[Noodles]

[GoblinCampFollower, post: 217520, member: 120"]
What percentage of this forum are web developers??? lol. Seems like a lot of it. I've done just about every kind of development other than web... (not counting classes)
[/QUOTE]

Web Dev is my "first love" for coding, though the last dew years I have been leaning really heaving into Python. I plan to start learning Javascript next though, which falls under Web Dev I suppose.

 

[Chalice Yao]

I have used Digital Ocean for a VPS for years now. Probably over a decade now. They have a $5/month tier I believe.

They do, but it's like 1 cpu, 0.5gb ram, 10gb ssd. It's hard to beat the Hetzner deal (though I would be interested if there is one, because it's always, always good to have alternatives).

That said, for simple web dev, that droplet ( Droplet Pricing | DigitalOcean ) should be fine.

 

[Essence Lumin]

I use nearlyfreespeech.net for random experimenting. It is a linux environment. They will not hold your hand in any way. There are no ads. My total for all of 2022 was $11.67. You give them as much you like to start. I recommend $10. They will give you an email warning at I think $5. When your funds run out your site stops working. Never a bill or an unexpected charge. You always pay them if you wish to continue. No bills.

Some things are not done in the usual way. If you want to set up a wordpress site I strongly suggest you read their instructions as they are a little different. If you want to use ssh keys don't try to set up stuff in your home directory. It won't work. Instead look at your member profile page and click the button to generate an ssh key.

Sometimes it can be frustrating to figure this stuff out on their site but they are cheap and reliable. Read their faq thoroughly.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Just a mention about minimum fees for nearlyfreespeech.net. If all you do is create a site and are using no other resources such as storage, bandwidth, mysql or whatever you will be charged a penny a day or about $3.65 a year. If you use minimal other resources such as small non intensive scripts it will be basically the same or a few more pennies.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Sorry to post multiple times in a row. As far as backend databases they support mysql very well. I have read postgresql also works which I prefer but you may have headaches getting it to do so. You will need to search for postgresql nearlyfreespeech.net and prepare for some, possibly a lot of experimentation. I haven't tried to do it.

 

[Soen Eber]

Sorry to post multiple times in a row.

Nah, I'm a hockey fan. Hat tricks are absolutely fabulous!

 

[Soen Eber]

I went with Hetzner, and it looks like a great, affordable service.

Another related question: Do I need to have a registered domain name in order to have a primary IPS with Hetzner? For convenience I will be using IPV4 (I'm cooperating with someone who isn't very Linux-savy and I want to eliminate "learning opportunities" for her) - she has her own virtual server but has primarily done HTTP5 and CSS). Would they connect to a subdomain of Hetzner such as www2.hetzner.com/users/1234? I also see you have to assign a name to your ip, so would the url be www2.hetzner.com/users/MyName?

I hope this makes sense, I couldn't figure this out from their provided documentation.

tl/dnr: how can someone else publicly connect to my server via HTTP who does not have a Hetzner account?

 

[Chalice Yao]

You can technically point any domain (even the free 'dyndns' kind) at that primary IP, it does not need to be a bought domain to take the first steps. Usually it's better for webservers to have *some* sort of domain to access it with, either way - HTTPS and the according certificate setup does not work purely with IPs.

Also:
"tl/dnr: how can someone else publicly connect to my server via HTTP who does not have a Hetzner account? " <- Well, very yes and simple: They can either put http://<Your server's IP> into their browser, or http(s)://<The domain pointing at that IP>

Virtualverse is just another server in some datacenter with a public IP (70.32.21.249) with the domain 'virtualverse.one' resolving to that IP.
Essentially Domains simply exist so people don't need to memorize strings of numbers - and HTTPS encryption uses certificates which get made for specific domains, to essentially say 'Yes, the server behind the domain you pointed your browser at is the correct one, it did not get changed somehow, and the traffic is now encrypted.'