News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

jhunter1016

Re:Ask HN: What are you working on? (July 2025) on Monday July 28, 2025 @06:59AM (#44709532)
Still working on Orbiter[0], and open source web hosting solution focused on keeping things simple and helping developers avoid vendor lock-in.

We recently added serverless functions for backend support, specifically for the bhvr[1] stack though they work with just about anything.

[0] https://orbiter.host [1] https://bhvr.dev

Re:Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025) on Tuesday July 01, 2025 @06:32AM (#44432454)
Still working on Orbiter[1] but with some big changes.

Orbiter started as static website and web app hosting, but we recently added what we call server functions (what you call serverless functions). So now you can build full stack apps. Our preferred development stack to support is the new bhvr[2] stack.

1. https://orbiter.host 2. https://bhvr.dev

Re:Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025) on Monday May 26, 2025 @08:39AM (#44096911)
I’m working on Orbiter, simple static web hosting that allows anyone to upload a directory of files, use a CLI tool, or use a GitHub action to host their sites and apps in seconds.

My co-worker and I started this as a side project because we were building so many sample apps, proofs of concept, and engineering as marketing apps and we were feeling more and more locked into Vercel every day. So we wanted to go back to client and server separation and when we did that, we realized most hosting providers have moved toward server-side rendering as the default.

Client-side rendering isn’t for everyone, but plenty of people still make simple websites or even complex CSR web apps and don’t want to deal with fully integrated solutions like Vercel (and Netlify now to a lesser extent). Plus they want the flexibility of choosing different tools for their frontend and backend.

This remains a fully bootstrapped side project for us, but it’s gotten the most traction of any side project either of us has worked on.

https://orbiter.host

Re:Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025) on Monday April 28, 2025 @06:41AM (#43819738)
Working on static website hosting. Thinking about how I can build backend functionality for customers as well while maintaining the openness that the static hosting has offered.

https://orbiter.host

Re:Are Databases going to start dissappearing? on Thursday March 20, 2025 @07:12AM (#43421703)
I’ve thought about this a lot before in my personal and professional life. If you combine JSON with a SQLite database, you can get the best of both worlds.

Disclaimer, I wrote this for work but it is based on ideas I developed outside of work. https://pinata.cloud/blog/will-json-work-as-a-database/

Thank you! And thanks for the support!
Every site is hosted on IPFS. This creates a built-in version system and prevents vendor lock-out. Because we want this to be as open as possible (like the web should be), anyone can see a mapping of the history of the sites. We wrote more about it here: https://orbiter.host/blog/how-we-use-blockchain-behind-the-s...
Hey HN!

My co-founder and I launched Orbiter in January to solve an issue we were having with all the mini sites and apps we were launching for our day job. We had gotten frustrated with complicated deployment pipelines and wanted to return to launching simple static sites and launching them quickly.

So, we built Orbiter. We focused initially on making uploads of your static build folder simple and fast. We then layered in a CLI, an API, and a Github action. So Orbiter can fit into just about any workflow.

From the beginning, we wanted it to be open source, and after about 2 months of work, we have just open sourced the entire stack[1].

I hope you'll give it a try and please drop any feedback here.

1. https://github.com/orbiterhost

Re:Discover the IndieWeb, one blog post at a time on Monday February 24, 2025 @09:19AM (#43159816)
I made Orbiter. I did not make orbz.fun. That was done independently and I didn’t learn about it until the customer shared it.
Re:Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2025) on Monday February 24, 2025 @06:52AM (#43158487)
I’m building an open source static website hosting platform. The idea was to get back to less complexity. There are so many static sites and apps out there that jump through crazy deployment hoops just for something that should just be a simple file upload.

Recently open sourced everything.

https://github.com/orbiterhost/.github

Re:Discover the IndieWeb, one blog post at a time on Saturday February 22, 2025 @11:32AM (#43140429)
Someone built this which is similar but it grabs websites from blockchain pointers. https://orbz.fun

Older »