Static Website Hosting

"How do you get away with not paying for web hosting?"

This is something I've been asked when going over website design and deployment options with clients.

It's a reasonable question, and certainly in a world where everything in tech seems to be pay-forever by default, it really does seem like I must be "getting away" with something.

A high-level answer is to consider how many online services you already use - email, calendar, blogs, social media - which all have paid tiers, but which also provide at least some useful base functionality for free.  If you can take free feature A from over here and free feature B from over there, you can build a collection of useful services without having to pay forever for each of them.  Naturally, there will be limitations!  But, if you understand those limits, you still have plenty to work with. 

So, to begin with, what is static hosting and why is it even useful for a modern website?

"Static hosting" just means that when your web browser requests a site from the server, it gets the same data back, regardless of who is asking or when.  There's nothing to "log in" to, there's no "shopping cart", there's no personalized feed or comment section.  You load the page, you get that same, unchanged page.

...Asterisk.

See, modern web browsers are capable of handling really complicated sites.  Sites that make use of tools and trackers and services from all over the web, not just the initial page that loads.  If the browser is given the right instructions, it can load data from one site inside another.  There are different ways to achieve this.  One common thing you've seen many times is an embedded YouTube video or social media post.  A rectangular chunk of the website you're on is cut out, and pulled in from elsewhere.  It's often a little ugly, but very easy to do.  More elegant and subtle implementations exist, too.  This blog post is hosted on blogger, at "oswerk.blogspot.com".  But, that same data can be pulled in and styled according to my own website, "oswerk.net", and displayed there, as long as the code being served from "oswerk.net" understands how to make that happen.

And it does, because I'm a geek and I write websites for fun.  :^)

Static Hosting versus Dynamic Hosting

In the image above, your laptop loads two similar websites.  One is from a simple static server plus some linked services, the other is from a beefier dynamic server which handles everything itself.  (In reality, dynamic servers often use external resources too, but you get the idea.  On the left, the servers are all simple enough to be freebies.  On the right, some extra oomph is needed on the backend.) 

So, if we're clever, we can design a modern-looking, sleek and "dynamic"-appearing website, which in truth is being served up by the most simple of webservers, leveraging the browser itself to pull in dynamic content from other platforms.  Platforms like your free-tier Blogger or YouTube or Google Calendar accounts.

Then, who actually hosts these static sites? 

The biggest go-to hosts for this kind of thing are GitLab and GitHub.  These are services intended for programmers to collaborate on software projects.  Both of these services (and many similar ones) offer extensive documentation about how to set up a website using their servers, and have free-tier accounts for developers which allow static hosting.  You don't have to be a programmer to sign up - anybody can own a software project.  That software project can be hosted for free if it's public, and you're in luck - a website is exactly a public piece of software!

There are plenty of smaller alternatives to GitLab and GitHub, including nonprofits, services hosted in Europe - this is a space with a lot of niches, a lot of paths forward, and a lot of free hosting options.

So, what's the catch?

I don't deal in catches!  I understand tradeoffs.  Everything in computing and in life is a tradeoff.  And the key truth here is that not every website can be hosted for free.  Anything with a database which users can search, or account management, or online ordering, or even a simple form-to-email relay, will require some dynamic services on the backend, and could rule out static hosting as a viable option.

- User-submitted material like forums or comments?  Not on a static site.
- Anticipating millions of hits?  You'll want a dedicated server, maybe many.

I've got some neat tricks to integrate your business's public calendar or your blog posts, things to keep your site fresh and interesting, but the fact is that static hosting is not a suitable choice for everybody.  Many local and small businesses truly can "get away with" free static hosting for their websites, and others will need something different.

I am happy to design and implement whatever fits you best, be it a website or any other kind of software.  But by default, I will help you avoid as many pay-forever services as possible.

Big Tech = Big Disappointment

tldr: "Big Tech" is a big disappointment.  The answer?  Little tech.  Small tech.  Local tech!

I grew up alongside personal computing.  I've always been fascinated by tech and excited by the promise it holds - that technology can help everybody, limited only by our own imagination.

"Big Tech", though, is a big disappointment.  They've swapped out imagination for greed.

Society and the planet itself are finding out just how dangerous it is to let a handful of rich creeps decide everything.  But for the time being, I'm going to focus just on the tech giants.  Platform monoliths Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet/Google.  Hardware giants Nvidia and Intel.  Cloud and social giants Amazon, Meta/Facebook/Instagram, Oracle.

You know who "Big Tech" is.  They've probably made you groan at some point today.

Multi-factor authentication.  Upgrade prompts.  Terms and conditions agreements.  The official story is that all of this nonsense is to keep us safe.  There's a sliver of truth in that, but reality is that the nonsense to which Big Tech subjects us - all of it - is there to maximize their profits, and to minimize our agency.

Yet here we are, using their devices, beholden to their services, feeding their algorithms.  Meanwhile, they act more and more predatory, ignore what their customers actually want, pay no respect to truth or reciprocity, waste terawatts of energy in a frenzied AI arms race, and for what?  To help everybody?  No.  To make more money, and to have more control.

Many of us feel stuck, trapped using Big Tech's offerings, because Big Tech has eliminated as many alternatives as possible.  That's the bad news.

The good news is that beneath all the marketing and all the nonsense, many of the actual core services which Big Tech provide - the things we actually want or need - were built atop projects which academics and hobbyists and geeks created before.  Open software libraries and tools and protocols, which even the giants do not have the ability to lock up.  That means, anything useful which a tech giant can create or provide, so can we!

...And we can do it locally, without the noise and the nonsense.

You probably know a geek or two who runs their own home media server, instead of paying forever for way-too-many streaming services.  You might know some nerds who create their own websites for fun, by hand, choosing character and charm over generic templates.  You've likely met a tinkerer who has hooked up things which were never intended to operate together, either to solve an inconvenience, or just because they could.

(And, now you know at least one person who does all of those things.  :^)

Big Tech claims there's an app for that, whatever "that" is.  But tech is more fun, more real, and more useful, when it's yours.  If you want to own your own technology rather than paying forever for it, if you want a solution that's built around you and what you do and how you do it, rather than to line pockets in Silicon Valley, then you don't need Big Tech.

You deserve your own non-big tech.  Everybody does.

OSwerk - your digital handyman

Client Spotlight: Elysian Archery

Elysian Archery is an indoor archery range, with public hours and 24/7 key-card access for members.  It's a great space, and for anyone with even the slightest curiosity about archery, it's something you really ought to check out.

The owners, Laura and Ron, were preparing for their grand opening at the end of the month, and had an experience with an "AI"-focused designer which left them a bit cold - their words and descriptions were basically thrown out and replaced with generated content.  They had in mind something more simple and direct, something expressing their own vintage style and character.

Their logo is a wonderful piece they commissioned from local-ish artist Noah Sanders.  Upon seeing it, I immediately imagined an animated splash screen, something I haven't done for a website in some time now.  But, it all flowed so nicely in my head that I couldn't help but try it.  From there, I let the logo's colors and style inform the rest of my initial pitch for their website, and was thrilled when Laura wrote back: "I LOVE IT!!" ...I do too.  We each reloaded the site more times than we'd like to admit, to see the little welcoming animation.

The site uses an integrated blog to let the owners continue adding event details and gallery photos, and hosts their calendar of upcoming tournaments, leagues, and other special events.   It also features a 404 page, which, for a thing I hope nobody encounters, I'm pretty pleased with.

I hope you'll take a shot at Elysian Archery, even if you've never held a bow before.  I can attest that they're lovely folks to work with, and their setup is top-notch.

Ron and Laura Romnes, Elysian Archery
https://elysianarchery.com

Client Spotlight: Herbal Health and Wellness

Western medicine has kept my wife alive (type-1 diabetic), but has also repeatedly failed to help her.  To fill in the gaps left by our society's industry-managed healthcare, she began visiting Herbal Health and Wellness, a one-woman naturopathic clinic in Lake Crystal, Minnesota, several years ago now.  The results were so positive that I began going in too.  Dr. Megan Eineke isn't only a doctor; to us she's a healer.  Every town needs a Megan (though we have yet to meet anyone else like her).

I can't speak to her specific treatments or her understanding of human balance and well-being - her sense and intuition is way over my head - but I can and do recommend that anybody with pains or stubborn medical issues make an appointment.

As I became Dr. Megan's patient, and friend, I also became her digital handyman.  She was paying quite a bit for her website, which was kinda-sorta doing what she needed.  Her clients could book appointments, and she could update her list of services and other information, but there was no integration with her patient records or SOAP notes, which she also needed to manage in a HIPAA-compliant way.

There are plenty of one-size-fits-all services out there which let non-geeks put together their own functional web presence.  It's positive and healthy that such things exist.  But, it's also positive and healthy when someone outgrows them, and in this case, that's where I could help.

Step one was to research as many options as possible.  Megan is a delight to work with, and we quickly settled on a new, HIPAA compliant patient records platform, which includes an appointment booking portal. 

Liberating her website itself from the previous all-in-one solution was right up my alley; I make websites for fun.  I replicated the look and feel of her old site (simplifying the underlying tech) as a base, which led to some easy cleanup and refinements.  A few animated touches, some reorganization, and she had the site she wanted!

One addition which came later was the integration of Megan's blog.  Recently, while she was in the hospital(!) she wrote up over a dozen articles, which are set to be published monthly over the next year.

Megan is driven to connect, listen to, and help people, one-on-one, using her gifts and her talents.  She has also been very supportive as I started my own one-person business.  Hers is an example which I intend to honor and pay forward at every opportunity.

Dr. Megan Eineke, Herbal Health and Wellness
https://herbalhealthandwellness.org

Happy New Year!

Congratulations - you have survived 2025!  ...And good grief, what a year.

In 2025, we lost a lot of structure.  A lot of foundation.  A lot of trust.

But even the most senseless collapses leave in their wake room and reason to build.  To grow.  Puhpowee.

There is a great deal which needs doing.

The biggest, richest few already offer their answer - just do everything through us!  All your time, all your attention, all your money, just give it to us; our one-size-fits-all "solutions" will take care of everything.  Our algorithms, which cannot experience your world, will describe your world for you.

A better answer has been right in front of us, in our own hands, all along.  In fact, it IS our own hands.

When we make and do things ourselves, when we work with each other, when we strengthen our local communities - that's how we get the important work done.  That's how our real needs get addressed.  That's how we express and receive gratitude and appreciation.  That's how we make human business human again.

We know we're better off living and buying and reading and talking locally.  Now, it's time to live it.

Let's build and nurture the foundations and the trust, ourselves.  Together.