- Free hosting for non-profits
- If your client is a registered 501c3, they can apply to get a free standard hosting package from Bluehost. It takes a while to setup but is a great cost savings for clients. (UPDATE as of Jan 2019 - This service may no longer be provided so double check before you assume Bluehost still offers free hosting.)
- **Note: Bluehost has discontinued their nonprofit program. Free standard hosting package is no longer available** (Make this update on the “KX”).
- DreamHost: If your client is a registered US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, DreamHost offers a free shared hosting plan. The first year of domain registration is included for free. DreamHost also offers a free SSL certificate through LetsEncrypt. Once you create an account and submit your determination letter, they can then approve the account for nonprofit status. This should not take too long after the letter has been received. This discount will remain active for the lifetime of the DreamHost account. For more information about this offer and how to sign up for it click here:https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/236316908-DreamPress-non-profit-discount (Links to an external site.)
- Amazon Web Services offers free temp accounts that are basic for development
- Click here for steps to create free AWS Educate account (Links to an external site.). Since this is a free edu license, it should only be used for development and not for the final production system you deliver.
- Click here for tutorials on using AWS (Links to an external site.)
- How to migrate an AWS Server from one account to another. Click here for details.
How to allow web traffic on a AWS -
For security purposes the default configuration limits inbound traffic to only SSH on port 22. Most web servers run on port 3000, so you must allow inbound traffic on that port for the server to serve up pages.
To do this on AWS edit the security group tied to your ec2 to allow TCP traffic on the port the web server is running on.
This can also be done by allowing HTTP access on port 80 and using an AWS Load Balancer which mitigates the need for adding the port to the end of the url since 80 is the default (i.e. example.com:80 = example.com)
- For a dev sandbox consider using Altervista.org (Links to an external site.) which is completely free but not robust. This is good for basic static website and Wordpress hosting
- Microsoft Azure
- You can signup for free, temporary access through Microsoft Imagine program. Click here for details. NOTE: Since this is a free edu license, it should only be used for development and not for the final production system you deliver. Also, note that a free edu account may not be easy to convert into a paid account. If your client has budget follow the instructions below to initially create an Azure account with a basic paid service.
- Click here for details on how to set up a basic paid Azure service
- An EC2 instance is a virtual server in Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for running applications on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure.
- Heroku - Heroku offers an easy way to deploy web applications on AWS without dealing with AWS instances. There is also a free tier to develop on and easily scalable.
- Hosting a Django App using Gunicorn and Nginx
- To host a web application in a production environment, you need a static file server to serve your stylesheets, js files, and images. Though Django’s built-in development server handles these static files, it is not recommended to use the Django development server in production.
- Here is a tutorial that will get your django app running in production in less than 20 min! https://gist.github.com/Atem18/4696071 (Links to an external site.)
- (Links to an external site.)SmarterASP.NET (Links to an external site.) (ASP.NET hosting with free trial accounts)
- NET is better suited towards smaller systems that do not need significant processing power or a large amount of database storage. Azure Pricing is expense since it is geared toward large-scale corporate IT systems whereas SmarterASP.Net is MUCH cheaper.
- NET also has a 60-day free trial account, that does NOT require a credit card number and includes one web application and one database.
- Supports multiple types of databases including Microsoft SQL Server as well as MySQL.
- Supports both custom builds as well as CMSs such as Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, and more.
- Finally, SmarterASP.NET has good reviews and free live chat support.
Configuring Gmail to be used by SMTP
SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) is one of the most frequently used methods of sending emails automatically. However there are steps you must take first
https://www.arclab.com/en/kb/email/how-to-enable-imap-pop3-smtp-gmail-account.html
Steps 1, 2, and use configuration for Gmail SMTP Server
Cloud Services:
cloud.google.com (Infrastructure as a Service)
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CPanel File Manager Guide for GoDaddy - This guide explains how to change and execute code if your client has their website hosted on GoDaddy. While this guide shows how to make changes to the website from CPanel, we recommend changing code first on a local server such as XAMPP - CPanelNavigationGuide.docx