2019-11-04-new-host.html (2563B) - raw

      1 <!-- title: New website hosting servers -->
      2 <!-- slug: new-host -->
      3 <!-- categories: Decentralization, Personal domain -->
      4 <!-- date: 2019-11-04T00:00:00Z -->
      5 
      6 <p>
      7   Until yesterday, this website had been hosted by <a href="https://gitlab.com">GitLab</a> (using
      8   GitLab Pages). For some time now the fact that they used servers owned by Google bothered me, so I
      9   have been looking for a new host for a while.</p>
     10 <!-- /p -->
     11 
     12 <p>
     13   One possibility I looked at was paying for a virtual private server. They aren't particularly
     14   expensive, but since the complete website's size is under 1MiB, a whole virtual server is a bit
     15   too much. Of course, I could use it to host other services (maybe a private Gitea instance, or a
     16   database to backup my files), but those are services that I don't need right now. Besides, I still
     17   wouldn't have any power to ensure no IPs of my visitors are logged somewhere, so it wouldn't solve
     18   my problems.</p>
     19 <!-- /p -->
     20 
     21 <p>
     22   Another option I considered was getting a home server. I would love to learn how to build a server
     23   out of nothing, set it up and get it up and running, but I don't want to have a computer running
     24   24/7 at home and, if it was to stop working, my website would be down for some time (until I
     25   had spare time to fix it). Indubitably, any server can have downtime, but I trust that volunteers
     26   partly dedicated to maintaining servers will be able to fix issues before I can do it myself.</p>
     27 <!-- /p -->
     28 
     29 <p>
     30   So I had to find a privacy respecting host that would serve a small static site like mine at a
     31   reasonable price. I found a couple of sites that interested me, but <a
     32   href="https://www.autistici.org">Autistici/Inventati</a> was the one that got most of my
     33   attention. First of all, they respect users' privacy—or so they claim—and it is one of the
     34   projects that has given me the best impression in this matter so far. They also have a
     35   decentralized network thanks to the <a href="https://www.autistici.org/who/rplan/">R* plan</a>
     36   and, on top of that, the project has ethical values that I share (something that I wasn't looking
     37   for in a host, but is much appreciated). Finally, my hosting is free of charge, although I will
     38   donate to the project to help it keep running.</p>
     39 <!-- /p -->
     40 
     41 <p>
     42   In conclusion, I am very happy with my new host. It is better than what I was looking for and I
     43   get to choose how much I want to pay for it. What is more, I know that anything I donate to
     44   support it will go to a project trying to make a better internet.</p>
     45 <!-- /p -->