Another free hosting option

#1

I’m not sure where best to place this.

If you’re looking for alternative free hosting, check out:

It’s a static site hosting. The files are stored in your ATproto repo/account and whichever PDS/server your account is hosted.

Features:

  • 2 free wisp.place subdomains
  • custom domain setup
  • multiple sites
  • CLI actions
  • CI/CD
  • directory uploading
  • automatic Github/Gitlab/Codeberg uploading (still in development)

As an example: https://wiki.youronly.one is hosted in the ATmosphere network via wisp.place. Currently, I manually upload if I have updates.

This is how it is stored: PDSls

:vulcan_salute:t4:

(I’m not affiliated with them, just sharing.)

9 Likes
#2

But I wonder how they make money? To revive an old saying: if it’s free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

Does anybody know this? Remember the old days when Googly would place irritating ads all over your webpage. I wonder what they do now?

#3

I’m not sure how to answer this without making it long.

The short answer is, wisp.place isn’t the one doing the hosting, it is where your ATmosphere account is hosted.

Most ATmosphere accounts are hosted by default by Bluesky PBC PDSses, since that’s the default sign-up place for new accounts. Some of us transfer to a different PDS hosted by others, while some are self-hosting.

Wisp.place in this case simply made it easier to upload files into your ATmosphere account, as well as, to use shorter custom domains instead of the default very long ones. If wisp.place disappears, someone can put up a similar app/service or if you know how to self-host, it’s possible too.

So, there’s no “you’re the product” since it’s all up to your PDS operator. And let’s say your PDS operator suddenly starts to do a “you’re the product” move, you can just move your account to another PDS.

I’m not sure if I explained it accurately and clearly. If anything, tip or donate to the developer of wisp.place and your PDS operator.

1 Like
#4

It seems wisp-place is developed by a private developer known as necomimi(dot)pet.

image
image917×86 3.14 KB

The documentation GitHub link leads to a 404, which is not good.

image
image1882×49 5.83 KB

On the docs page there is a link to a CLI (Command Line Interface), which you have to use to “upload” your wiki and interact with the wisp “proxi”.

For me personally, this is the main problem. It downloads a multi megabyte executable, that you have to trust, without really knowing it. If you download and execute it on your machine you need to trust a private developer that you probably don’t know.

The docs-page also links to a wisp repository at tangled(dot)org, which seems to be a Git hosting service (which I personally did not know till now).

The CLI code seems to be hosted there. The CLI seems to be written in Rust. … So it should be possible to audit and build the stuff yourself, if you can read Rust code.

I did not have enough time to have a closer look. But I could not find a fingerprint that the CLI executable should have, to be sure it was not tempered with.

1 Like
#5

I may have come off as a little sceptical (<-- why does this word come out as a spelling error?:face_with_monocle:) /cynical/rude. Thank you for explaining that too me.

I’ll give it a go.

1 Like
#6

Skeptical: You deny all suspicious shit.

Septical: You accept all suspicious shit.

1 Like
#7

Reminds me of a friend, as we are walking past some multi-million dollar waterfront homes, “There is a lot of ‘effluent’ people living here”.

4 Likes
#8

Skeptical: You deny all suspicious things.

Septical: You accept all suspicious things.

2 Likes
#9

Forwarded your questions to the developer:

#10

Hi, I’m the maintainer of the place.

Skepticism is good! Especially for info like this. To address ‘making money’ I actually expect to lose money since its a hobbyist project of mine funded out of my pocket. So far it isnt costing me much and I’ve gotten enough donos to cover two years worth.

The overall goal of the project was really for me to be able to quickly setup static sites for my projects without being reliant on netlify, vercel, github, etc and I like to share the software I make. The CLI doesnt depend on my servers at all and uses your PDS as a way to store a manifest and receive updates on automatically so you can host it anywhere on your infra and push updates wherever to it whether its from CI/CD or your own terminal.

I have tried to ensure that the project doesnt just randomly blow up my wallet one day, but if it ever does, Ill be eating the cost, Ill never do what Vercel or Netlify does and blow up your credit card too. I do need to distribute binaries better though, I have sha1 hashes here: Wisp CLI 0.4.1 (alpha) | Wisp.place Docs

5 Likes
#11

Hi @WaveringAna – Thanks for your feedback. Nice that you joined our forum to give feedback.

As I wrote in my first post, you should update the link to the Git repository on your documentation page. The missing link made it much harder to track down the source code.

Just a question because of personal interest. Why did you choose tangled.org to manage your Git repository?

4 Likes
#12

Just one suggestion: can you add what “ AT Protocol” means for tech illiterate users like myself

#13

It’s a form of distributed identity management. It is the transport system for the BlueSky social network. As far as I know, that is the only prominent usage of the protocol, unlike it’s chief competitor, ActivityPub, which has a more widespread adoption. There is a serious attempt to widen the base, though, as BlueSky is getting negative press about claiming to be federated when nearly all its users are on a single platform.

I haven’t investigated Wisp or its backing tools, but I’m guessing the main point of it is that you can control the source code of your static app through this decentralized network, where you are not beholden to individual providers for anything. If GitHub were to stop hosting web content tomorrow, I personally would be scrambling to move many sites around. I’m guessing that Wisp attempts to solve this problem.

There’s much more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT_Protocol.

1 Like