How are any of these simpler than "Get VM, install server, rsync files"? Why is the solution always "sign up for a proprietary service that might not exist next year and rig up a bunch of fragile webhooks"?

Also, I don't use Git or Github.

It's simpler from a certain point of view, namely one where you don't want to have to maintain the VM.

It's more complicated because you need to know more random tech that I bet you don't want to learn. Which is fine, it's really not necessary.

By the way, you should learn git sometime. Or there's a couple other VCSes that are somewhat known, but git is both good and has good networking effects (everyone uses it).

I prefer Mercurial, and as a hobbyist I can afford to stay with it. I know Git has GitHub and all the connectivity of that, but I just truly dislike Git.

Ah, I didn't see that you use mercurial instead of git when I made my last comment.

I'd love to be able to make red-line decisions like this regardless, no matter what. For example, I absolutely hate MacOS and would love to say "hard no" to any job offer if they insist that I use MacOS, regardless of job fit or TC. But ultimately, I back down once they show me the money, and find myself using it anyway.

That works, as long as you know one of them.

I agree about the fragile frameworks but not the rest.

In this case I'd say that "simple" is a product of familiarity, manual steps, and future maintenance. "Get a VM" also means "install stuff on a VM", "secure a VM", "monitor load, memory, disk space on a VM" and "manage a VM into the future, upgrading the host OS and fixing whatever breaks". Is rsync easier than git? Maybe, but it doesn't have version control (which is nice to have). I think the git suggestions are based on the assumption that only a tiny number of people could do VM setup, webserver config, rsync etc but couldn't do git add, commit and push.

Personally, I use Cloudflare because it handles DNS, CDN and is basically hands-off after setup.

* no need to install and configure OS

* No need to install and configure web server

* No need to setup firewall

* No need to main and patch above components every day

* No need to upgrade the OS every few months/years

I have not used mercurial in close to a decade, but from what I can remember you could push to a git server from the mercurial client.

I'm an SRE and I'll say that all of these services are far simpler than configuring, maintaining and monitoring a VM.

If you want to maintain your Mercurial setup then consider S3 + Cloudfront.

Azure websites and githubpages are nice too. Why pay when you don't have to?

Free services never truly are, and I don't want to build something on a foundation I don't pay for. Corporate generosity always runs out eventually.

It is not generosity, they hook you in for free so when your needs grow you will stick with their platform and pay. Static sites are cheap to host that is why it is free.

Should your needs grow past simple static sites they are hoping you will use their paid options. This isn't a "you are the product" situation.

Does pages.cloudlare also run apps or just static pages?

just static page. But you can use their worker service to run some server-side functions

Miss the digital ocean 3 free site offer. May try that.

Also forgot https://render.com/docs/static-sites

Yeah. My experience with hosting a svelte site on render was just amazing. Highly recommend it