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Cheap services you would need for a Budget Pet Project

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Cheap services you would need for a Budget Pet Project

Seth Chen's photo
Seth Chen
·

3 min read

Hey guys,

Everybody would have their own pet projects (Personal Projects that you work for fun, for knowledge, for practice,...), wouldn't they?

And it is super awesome if you can:

  • Deploy it 🚀

  • Share with the whole world 😆

  • Add it to your own portfolio 🥳

You don't need to be shy or feel like it doesn't worth show-off, but it is. Not to mention that you would learn all of these cool stuff:

  • Deployment processes (from manual to CI/CD)

  • Server stuff (Linux, setup env,...)

  • Domain configuration

  • SEO

  • ...

It is definitely the sky's the limit. There is soooo much growth potential.

I will share with you some of the services I usually use for my projects.

Some of the "DEFAULT" services/tools

  • GitHub: to store the source code (publicly or privately)

    • Actions: to run CI/CD processes (Free 3000m/month for the private repos because I'm using GitHub Pro)

    • CodeSpaces: cloud coding (Free 180hrs/month because I'm using GitHub Pro)

  • CodeCov: to analyze the code coverage of my projects (free with limitations, but all cool)

Servers

In order to deploy your cool stuff to the web, you need a server . I prefer using a VPS - Virtual Private Server. PROs:

  • I have my own resources to run my web apps, shared-nothing arch.

  • Working with a terminal like a hacker.

  • I can deploy multiple websites in 1 server if I wanted to.

Cheap services that I usually use:

  • Vultr: cheap VPS (starting from $2.5) and you can pay hourly too. It is giving you $50 for free (1st month). The $10 one is my favourite. My main service at the moment.

  • DigitalOcean: cheap VPS service too. I've used it 3-4 times.

  • AWS Lightsail: cheap VPS service powered by Amazon. Used once but really enjoy it.

Additionally: a normal AWS account would give you a free VPS (EC2) and a free RDS instance for a year too, you only have to pay for the traffic (the more traffic, the higher invoice per month).

Domain

Yeah, a domain needs to come after the server (even first). There are some cheap domain services:

  • GoDaddy: $0.99 .com domain (and other cheap TLDs) (you probably need to search for the voucher on the internet)

  • PorkBun: cheap domain too for a lot of TLDs, eg I got the sethphat.dev for $11.99, quite ok.

For the domain, once bought, you can use it for a whole year.

DNS Service

After having a domain, you need to set up the DNS (basically pointing it to your server). You can use:

  • Your domain's provider DNS service: the quickest option.

  • Cloudflare: a powerful DNS service that backs you up with a lot of cool things:

    • Hide your servers

    • Analytics (the traffic)

    • Cache / CDN for your static files

    • DDoS

    • ...

SSL (HTTPS)

Of course, this is mandatory. Nobody wants to access an HTTP website, insecure.

One and only free option: LetsEncrypt.

You can install it to your server and add a cron job to renew the cert by using CertBot

Conclusion

Well, that's it. Happy sharing your awesome projects with the whole big world.

Cheers!

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