42 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
42 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: "Hosting Static Sites"
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date: 2023-05-28T21:00:00-08:00
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draft: false
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tags: [azure, hugo, hosting]
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---
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I have always stayed away from posting anything on the internet. So when it came to getting some of my sites hosted online, well I have had some pitfalls. Hopefully some of the issues I have run into, you can avoid going forward.
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## History
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I am always looking for the next free thing when it comes to my projects. This has resulted in me hosting things internally only or not at all. I got my domain so I can start to detach more from the big sites and do things on my own a bit. But now, I had to figure out how to build a site.
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Building the site was not as hard, [hugo](https://gohugo.io/) did make this site much easier to build. I am not looking for anything complex and with a bunch of javascript overhead so a static website generator was perfect! At first, I was able to get something online at least locally and it looked good. So it was time to deploy it.
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## Github
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I start with attempting to deploy on [github.io](https://pages.github.com/?(null)). This comes packed in with the repository and all I needed to do was make a couple of changes to deploy the site. Got that setup and then the site was available at jtom38.github.io. Well, that's nice and all but I wanted to get it to route to my domain. This is when things started to fall apart.
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Based on the documentation this process should be nothing more than adding a record into my DNS and then setting up the CNAME record. Well, it worked somewhat. One page would work but none of the subpages would load correctly. I would then put the project down for a while as time was limited.
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I started to work on a custom hugo theme [cookbook](https://github.com/jtom38/hugo-cookbook) for my new family cookbook. I did learn more about the inner workings of Hugo and that was great! I did get that site running just on [github.io](https://pages.github.com/?(null)) but never made it back to my site (this one).
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## Digital Ocean
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Later on, I thought about it and figured I needed to take a look at getting a hosted solution for the sites. Attempted Digital Ocean due to having something like 5 free static sites per account. I thought that would be great! I went through the process of getting started and stopped within one night. The problem is I use the go.mod file in my hugo projects. The go.mod file is much better than using a git submodule for hugo.
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The problem is Digital Ocean attempts to detect what your project is based on reviewing the repo. Sure, go for it. When I attempted to tell it that it was a Hugo project, it would never build correctly. I would attempt to manually tell it what the project was and then wanted to give me a monthly bill. No, this is a static website so give me the free stuff!
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Needless to say, this never worked out and it was abandoned.
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## Azure Static Web Sites
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I am now back home after a trip and I wanted to get these sites all hosted in a location that was not just my home network. I can make a docker image or an Apache server, but I don't have a static IP at home and that was going to be another problem. I do have a solution for the lack of static IP, but more on that in a later post. :)
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At one point in time, I did use an AWS S3 bucket to host a website. It was fine, it worked I am just not an AWS guy. I learned Azure first for work and that's where I stayed. So I got a new Azure subscription setup and I was going to host the site in an Azure Storage Account in a public blob bucket. Then I remembered that Microsoft has a free tier for Azure Static Web Sites. I did some digging and figured, why not try it? The hugo documentation was pushed this way and let me give you my thoughts.
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I am now running this site on the Azure service and my initial impressions of Azure Static Web Sites, are good! I created a new FREE resource and give it access to my repo. Azure/Github loaded a new CI workflow to deploy to the Azure resource and within 5 minutes, the site was online. The theme was loaded and the links looked good. I was happy!
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Getting DNS setup was also very simple. On the left-hand side, go to Custom Domains to get started. Tell it what the domain would be (example: www.yourdomainhere.com) and copy the URL given and create a new DNS record. Once the record has been made, go back to Azure and tell it Ok. It will check the records and enable the traffic.
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Overall this was very painless and I am glad this is another thing off my to-do list. Now back to some of my other projects that I might have been neglecting.
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