Re: [tlug] Buying domain names

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2018-12-09 21:21 +0900 (Sun), Andreas Kieckens wrote:

> I'm planning to buy some domain names. (.com, .jp, .net, .org) I was 
> wondering what service everyone is using to buy their domains and why. 

I've been using joker.com on and off because they work ok, they seem
large enough that they'll stick around indefinitely, and they don't
seem to rely on advertising and other services for revenue. (See below
for more on that.) I've also been looking at gandi.net (mainly because
they register JP domains), and considering Amazon AWS now that they're
a registrar. I'm also interested in good reasons to pick one over
another, since most instances I've seen have been picked "because it
happened to be the one I fell into at the time."

> Also if anyone has a recommendation for cheap but decent web and
> mail server hosting, that'd be welcome. Of course a server or
> virtual instance with root access where I set up my own stuff will
> work just as well.

For web hosting I strongly suggest going JAMStack[1] wherever you can.

JAMStack is basically the Web 2.0 of static sites: as much of the site
as possible is static (though usually the final code is generated from
source files, such as building a blog from Markdown files and a bit of
configuration) which makes it easy to distribute via CDN and,
especially, easy to switch hosting for that part of the site. GitHub
Pages[2] (github.io) and Netlify[3] are typical hosting for this.

The "dynamic" parts involve JS/Ajax calling back into other services
which range from full features-as-a-service (e.g., comments via Disqus
or web forms and many other things via Netlify) to individual bits of
"serverless"[4] code run "in the cloud." The latter can also be easily
run on your own servers if you like and, again, unless you use
proprietary features of specific cloud providers, these are easy to
move to other hosting if and when you wish.

I've been meaning for a long time to move a couple of my sites to
Netlify and I'd be very happy to coördinate and lead some weekend
meetups to learn about this together. I'm currently tending towards
Hakyll[5] for site generation, though I'm open to other ideas.

[1]: https://thenewstack.io/the-sweetness-of-jamstack-javascript-apis-and-markup/
[2]: https://pages.github.com/
[3]: https://netlify.com
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing
[5]: https://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/

For mail hosting, if you're not going to run your own software, Gsuite
seems to me a no-brainer. I use both my own system and Gsuite and,
giving how much less important email has become in the modern world,
I'm getting tempted to move all my email to Gsuite. That said, I
currently still have enough concerns about it that I'm running my own
mail servers/clients in parallel, and I'm dabbling with Dockerizing
these so that I can move them freely between servers (my own and
various cloud hosting). That's another area where I might be willing
to do some workshops with others to advance that a bit.

On 2018-12-09 20:52 +0800 (Sun), Raymond Wan wrote:

> I'm using GoDaddy, but I have to admit that I didn't do any 
> shopping.  It happened to be the same company that a former 
> employer used before I joined them.  I was hoping whoever 
> decided for them knew more about purchasing domain names 
> than me...

They did not. Godaddy is absolutely awful because, despite not being
any cheaper than anybody else, they tend to spam you to death with
advertising their other services (where they make their real money) at
every chance they get.

cjs
-- 
Curt J. Sampson      <cjs@example.com>      +81 90 7737 2974

To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
    - L Peter Deutsch