hostingthing Ask for a site

A folder · a domain · online

Send the files. We put them online.

A website on hostingthing is a folder of finished pages. You send it, we serve it on your domain with HTTPS, and it stays up. No server to rent, no certificates to renew, nothing on your side to maintain.

See it side by side What's behind it

Act I

Doing it yourself.

You have a folder of pages and a domain. Putting them online properly, once, looks like this.

01 · A server

First, rent a computer.

Pick a region, an operating system and a size you can't judge yet, and paste in an SSH key you'll need to keep safe from now on.

cloud-provider.example/servers/new
Create a server Cloud provider
Region Frankfurt
Image Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
Size 2 vCPU · 2 GB
SSH key ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1… you@laptop
Create server
Server created · 203.0.113.10 · billed hourly

02 · A web server

Then configure a web server.

Install nginx, write a server block by hand, link it into place, test it, reload it. The syntax is its own small language.

ssh — root@203.0.113.10
# apt update && apt install -y nginx
# nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/your-site
server_name your-site.example www.your-site.example;
root /var/www/your-site;
location / { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; }
# ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/your-site /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
# nginx -t && systemctl reload nginx

03 · HTTPS

Then get a certificate.

certbot edits your nginx config for you and hands you a certificate that expires in ninety days. Renewal is a timer you hope is running.

ssh — root@203.0.113.10
# apt install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
# certbot --nginx -d your-site.example -d www.your-site.example
Enter email address (used for urgent renewal and security notices):
Successfully deployed certificate for your-site.example
This certificate expires on 2026-12-26.
# certbot renew --dry-run

04 · The files

Then upload. After every edit.

A fixed typo is another upload, from the one laptop that has the right key and remembers the right flags.

~/your-site
$ rsync -avz --delete ./ root@203.0.113.10:/var/www/your-site/
sent 1,284,006 bytes received 412 bytes
# fixed a typo on the contact page
$ rsync -avz --delete ./ root@203.0.113.10:/var/www/your-site/

05 · Keeping it alive

And then nobody's watching.

Security updates, a disk slowly filling with logs, and the backups you meant to set up. When it goes down, you find out from a customer.

ssh — root@203.0.113.10
# apt list --upgradable | wc -l
87
# df -h /var/log
/dev/vda1 25G 23G 2.0G 92% /
# ls /var/backups/your-site
ls: cannot access '/var/backups/your-site': No such file or directory

That was one site, set up once.

commands
12
config files by hand
1
things that break quietly
3
people watching it
0

Here's the same site, on hostingthing.

Act II

The hostingthing way.

Your side is three steps, and two of them happen once.

01 · Send the folder

You send the files.

The pages, the images, the stylesheet: whatever the site is made of. By email is fine. There's no account and nothing to install.

rytter.jakob@gmail.com
Here's the site for your-site.example, attached as your-site.zip.
Got it. It goes up as soon as your domain points at us. Add these two records wherever your domain is registered:
A @ 203.0.113.10
A www 203.0.113.10

02 · Point the domain

You point the domain, once.

Two records at your registrar. The domain stays registered in your name, and you never touch this again.

registrar.example/your-site.example/dns
your-site.example DNS records
Type A
Name @ and www
Value 203.0.113.10
Save
Saved. That's all.

03 · It's live

And it's online.

At your own address, with HTTPS that renews itself. An edit is an email with the new words, and the site stays up without you doing anything.

~
$ curl -sI https://your-site.example
HTTP/2 200
content-type: text/html
cache-control: public, max-age=0, must-revalidate
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000
via: 1.1 Caddy

Act III

What's behind it.

Everything you never have to see, and none of it is magic. These are the real commands and the real answers from the host serving this page.

Our side · 01

A site is a folder and a line.

Your files go in a folder, your domain goes in the registry, and a check makes sure the two agree before anything ships.

~/hostingthing
$ unzip your-site.zip -d sites/your-site
$ printf 'your-site.example\nwww.your-site.example\n' > domains/your-site
$ mix sites.check
no drift: 23 live, 0 todo

Our side · 02

Deployed with the fleet.

The host runs on iacthing. A deploy pins the new sites into the release and switches the server to it; the proxy in front reads the same registry and gets a certificate for every name in it.

~/iacthing
$ nix flake update hostingthing
$ nix run nixpkgs#deploy-rs -- .#prod01
[deploy] The following profiles are going to be deployed: prod01.system
[activate] Activation succeeded!

Our side · 03

Every request is one of five answers.

A page, a "you already have it", a redirect to a folder's page, the site's own not-found page, or a refusal to anything but reading. That's the whole host.

~
$ curl -sI https://vpsthing.com
HTTP/2 200 · etag: "63B9516" · via: 1.1 Caddy
$ curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}' https://vpsthing.com/nope
404
$ curl -s -X POST -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}' https://vpsthing.com/
405
What you never have to think about
Measure Doing it yourself hostingthing
HTTPS certbot and a renewal timer renewed in front of the site
Backups the ones you meant to set up every change kept, off the machine
Edits an upload after every one send the words
When it goes down a customer tells you I hear about it first
Your name on it yes yes, and you can leave with it

Ask for a site.

One flat monthly price, agreed up front, and no invoice per change. It's invite only: tell me what the site is and I'll tell you the number. If it's a few pages that rarely change, a free host really is enough, and I'd rather say so.

Ask for a site