I ask genuinely out of interest, because I’ve only recently started playing with Linux etc - but when VPS, or even cloud servers, are so cheap and available, what is the benefit in self hosting in today’s climate?
I have a Debian 9 VPS, 8gb RAM, 80gb HDD, decent CPU and connection for under £10 a month. That to me (personally) makes self hosting seem pointless
Again it’s not a dig - I’m genuinely curious
We do both
And times that by the 3 servers that are used to run the
www.omegaowners.com site, we're into the realms of way beyond what OOF could afford
. And what we really, really, really don't want here is embedded ads and the like. Performance for the cost is the prime driver for how we do things.
There are other security issues around the cheapie shared (inc VPS) type hosting, such as exposing databases to the Internet, and rogue processes running on the same physical iron - although the data we hold isn't that valuable beyond encrypted passwords (as many use same passwords for everything).
Our model is based on delivering "computationally cheap", but bandwidth hungry, static content from a low cost shared host, and "expensive" dynamic content from our own servers.
I can also tell that your host does not have support contracts in place, so when it all goes completely Pete Tong, you will get little assistance. Which isn't usually an issue for a small home site, which is where shared (inc VPS) is aimed. OOF would be harmed if we lost our huge library of guides and advice.
And those that were here at the start of OOF will well remember we started out on shared hosting, and got banned from their servers in less than a fortnight due to resource usage
. That's why we "temporarily" ended up with our current model. As it turns out, our self hosted components have proven to be generally more reliable that the externally hosted stuff. And that in itself has made changing be constantly low down the priority list... ...and as OOF slowly runs out of money, we have been looking at the cheapest possible options for some time.