Free web storage for static HTML?
Trying to help out few non-techie people, but I'm also interested personally... How do you make few *static HTML* files available online for *free?* I looked at * Google Site -- you can't upload html file * Dropbox -- it shows you the text content of HTML files. * GitHub -- same thing. Failing that, I'm considering * Put the files on USB stick, and plug it into router. It has web/file server. I would have to register DDNS, though. * Set up web server on a Linux computer. But, I don't want to be "tech support".
I’ve hosted static sites using GitHub Pages, Netlify and CloudFlare Pages. In my cases, these were rendered from markdown using either Hugo or Pelican, but I think that Github Pages, Netlify and CloudFlare Pages are able to take raw HTML files instead. These services all have free tiers, which would serve the needs of a lot of non-commercial users. Hope that helps.
On Oct 18, 2025, at 11:28 PM, William Park via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
Trying to help out few non-techie people, but I'm also interested personally...
How do you make few static HTML files available online for free?
I looked at Google Site -- you can't upload html file Dropbox -- it shows you the text content of HTML files. GitHub -- same thing. Failing that, I'm considering Put the files on USB stick, and plug it into router. It has web/file server. I would have to register DDNS, though. Set up web server on a Linux computer. But, I don't want to be "tech support". ------------------------------------ Description: GTALUG Talk Unsubscribe via Talk-unsubscribe@lists.gtalug.org Start a new thread: talk@lists.gtalug.org This message archived at https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/message/CCXQNMQ...
On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 at 01:48, Stefan Kloppenborg via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
I’ve hosted static sites using GitHub Pages
Same here. E.g.: https://mlxxxp.github.io/documents/Arduino/libraries/Arduboy2/Doxygen/html/i... -- Scott
A lot of people use Wix. It is said to be simple and free. You don't even need to know html, so even simpler for non-tech people. Wordpress.com also has a free tier. Again, no need for HTML at all, making it much easier for no-tech friends. Learning and manipulating HTML is a technical hurdle for many non-tech people. On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 at 09:16, Scott Allen via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 at 01:48, Stefan Kloppenborg via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
I’ve hosted static sites using GitHub Pages
Same here. E.g.:
https://mlxxxp.github.io/documents/Arduino/libraries/Arduboy2/Doxygen/html/i...
-- Scott ------------------------------------ Description: GTALUG Talk Unsubscribe via Talk-unsubscribe@lists.gtalug.org Start a new thread: talk@lists.gtalug.org This message archived at https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/message/BHR4B7B...
goodness yes. At its most basic, its just a file format. WordPress even provides tools that do all the work for you. Wix, on the other hand does not produce content universally easy to access. Kare On Sun, 19 Oct 2025, Scott Allen via Talk wrote:
On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 at 09:29, Don Tai <dontai.canada@gmail.com> wrote:
Learning and manipulating HTML is a technical hurdle for many non-tech people.
LibreOffice Write, and I'm guessing many other word processing applications, can save documents in HTML format.
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My Unreliable Robot (MUR) suggested the following: If you do speak html, then create a repo called specifically //github.com/<yourusername>/ Clone it with the odd incantation git clone https://github.com/<yourusername>/<yourusername>.github.io.git Create an Index.html page and push it Browse to https://<yourusername>.github.io NOT TESTED! --dave On 10/19/25 09:29, Don Tai via Talk wrote:
A lot of people use Wix. It is said to be simple and free. You don't even need to know html, so even simpler for non-tech people. Wordpress.com also has a free tier. Again, no need for HTML at all, making it much easier for no-tech friends. Learning and manipulating HTML is a technical hurdle for many non-tech people.
On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 at 09:16, Scott Allen via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 at 01:48, Stefan Kloppenborg via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote: > I’ve hosted static sites using GitHub Pages
Same here. E.g.: https://mlxxxp.github.io/documents/Arduino/libraries/Arduboy2/Doxygen/html/i...
-- Scott ------------------------------------ Description: GTALUG Talk Unsubscribe via Talk-unsubscribe@lists.gtalug.org Start a new thread: talk@lists.gtalug.org This message archived at https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/message/BHR4B7B...
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-- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest davecb@spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain
In actual fact. MUR is subtly wrong... that's why he's an /unreliable/ robot. (see also c3po) * git clone git@github.com:davecb/davecb.github.io.git * cd davecb.github.io * vi index.html * git add index.html * git commit -m "first commit" * git branch -M main * git push I don't use https URLs, they fail (:-)) The result looks like --dave On 10/19/25 16:25, David Collier-Brown via Talk wrote:
My Unreliable Robot (MUR) suggested the following: If you do speak html, then create a repo called specifically //github.com/<yourusername>/
Clone it with the odd incantation git clone https://github.com/<yourusername>/<yourusername>.github.io.git
Create an Index.html page and push it
Browse to https://<yourusername>.github.io
NOT TESTED!
--dave
On 10/19/25 09:29, Don Tai via Talk wrote:
A lot of people use Wix. It is said to be simple and free. You don't even need to know html, so even simpler for non-tech people. Wordpress.com also has a free tier. Again, no need for HTML at all, making it much easier for no-tech friends. Learning and manipulating HTML is a technical hurdle for many non-tech people.
On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 at 09:16, Scott Allen via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 at 01:48, Stefan Kloppenborg via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote: > I’ve hosted static sites using GitHub Pages
Same here. E.g.: https://mlxxxp.github.io/documents/Arduino/libraries/Arduboy2/Doxygen/html/i...
-- Scott ------------------------------------ Description: GTALUG Talk Unsubscribe via Talk-unsubscribe@lists.gtalug.org Start a new thread: talk@lists.gtalug.org This message archived at https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/message/BHR4B7B...
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-- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest davecb@spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain
- How did you get the "code block"? Did you use triple-backticks (``` ... ```)? On 2025-10-19 09:16, Scott Allen via Talk wrote:
https://mlxxxp.github.io/documents/Arduino/libraries/Arduboy2/Doxygen/html/i...
On Mon, 20 Oct 2025 at 02:02, William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca> wrote:
- How did you get the "code block"? Did you use triple-backticks (``` ... ```)?
The entire site is rendered by Doxygen https://www.doxygen.nl/ Most text not generated by special comment blocks in the source code is created using Markdown, so yes, code blocks are entered using triple-backticks (mostly for C++, so ```CPP ... ``` Note that the main page just uses the README.md file from the parent GIT repository at https://github.com/MLXXXp/Arduboy2 , so it matches the description of that repository. -- Scott
Codeberg has something similar: see https://docs.codeberg.org/codeberg-pages/ On 10/20/25 08:57, Scott Allen via Talk wrote:
On Mon, 20 Oct 2025 at 02:02, William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca> wrote:
- How did you get the "code block"? Did you use triple-backticks (``` ... ```)? The entire site is rendered by Doxygen https://www.doxygen.nl/
Most text not generated by special comment blocks in the source code is created using Markdown, so yes, code blocks are entered using triple-backticks (mostly for C++, so ```CPP ... ```
Note that the main page just uses the README.md file from the parent GIT repository at https://github.com/MLXXXp/Arduboy2 , so it matches the description of that repository.
-- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest davecb@spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain
On Mon, 20 Oct 2025 at 09:33, David Collier-Brown via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
Codeberg has something similar: see
That appears to be for hosting static content, much like GitHub pages, not a way of generating content like Doxygen. -- Scott
Agreed! --dave On 10/20/25 10:00, Scott Allen wrote:
On Mon, 20 Oct 2025 at 09:33, David Collier-Brown via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
Codeberg has something similar: see
https://docs.codeberg.org/codeberg-pages/ That appears to be for hosting static content, much like GitHub pages, not a way of generating content like Doxygen.
-- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest davecb@spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain
William Park via Talk said on Sun, 19 Oct 2025 01:27:10 -0400
Trying to help out few non-techie people, but I'm also interested personally...
How do you make few *static HTML* files available online for *free?*
I looked at
* Google Site -- you can't upload html file * Dropbox -- it shows you the text content of HTML files. * GitHub -- same thing.
Failing that, I'm considering
* Put the files on USB stick, and plug it into router. It has web/file server. I would have to register DDNS, though. * Set up web server on a Linux computer. But, I don't want to be "tech support".
Look at your wishlist. DDNS costs me $60/year. Hosting it out of your home, besides making you "tech support", requires DDNS. Meanwhile, the web host I use, Shockhosting.Com, has a price of $2.24/month (that's $27/year) if you pay multiple months up front. You can host one domain and get unlimited email accounts. $27/year: Just have one less Old Spaghetti Factory dinner per year, and your hosting and DNS are covered. Four less packs of cigarettes per year. Four less trips to Tim Hortons per year. 200 less kilometers of driving per year. Four less beers at a "sports bar". The price people end up paying for "free" is usually obscene, and professional web hosting is one of today's few remaining bargains. SteveT Steve Litt http://444domains.com
That $2.24/month is for 3-years billing period, which comes to $80.64 every 3-year. A decent whiskey! - Does it include registering a domain (1 domain)? Or, is it separate? On 2025-10-19 02:18, Steve Litt via Talk wrote:
Look at your wishlist. DDNS costs me $60/year. Hosting it out of your home, besides making you "tech support", requires DDNS. Meanwhile, the web host I use, Shockhosting.Com, has a price of $2.24/month (that's $27/year) if you pay multiple months up front. You can host one domain and get unlimited email accounts.
$27/year: Just have one less Old Spaghetti Factory dinner per year, and your hosting and DNS are covered. Four less packs of cigarettes per year. Four less trips to Tim Hortons per year. 200 less kilometers of driving per year. Four less beers at a "sports bar".
The price people end up paying for "free" is usually obscene, and professional web hosting is one of today's few remaining bargains.
SteveT
Steve Litt
------------------------------------
On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 at 02:18, Steve Litt via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
DDNS costs me $60/year.
I've been using noip.com to provide a free DDNS domain for many years now. You have to confirm the name about once a month but I receive an email reminder with a link, so it just takes a few clicks to confirm. -- Scott
You can use any of the following. All of these have a free tier: Static website hosting: Big bad corpo ownership: - Github Pages: https://docs.github.com/en/pages - Cloudflare Pages: https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/ - Azure Static Websites/Webapps: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/static-web-apps/overview (there’s a free forever tier with storage/bandwidth limits and is unnecessarily complicated to use compared to the above; it’s a Microsoft “enterprise” product after all) - Oracle cloud storage: https://docs.oracle.com/en/learn/oci-api-gateway-web-hosting/index.html (also storage based, likely a few bucks if you exceed the “always free” limits; requires credit card to create the account) Big bad corpo (non-free; in case there’s a desire to learn these things): - AWS S3 storage: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/hands-on/latest/host-static-website/host-static-... (a few bucks a month) - Google Cloud storage: https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/hosting-static-website (likely also a few bucks a month) - Azure storage: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blob-static-we... (also based on storage costs, which should be a few bucks monthly) Non-profit/not so bad corpo ownership: - Gitlab Pages: https://docs.gitlab.com/user/project/pages/ - Codeberg Pages: https://docs.codeberg.org/codeberg-pages/ With regards to dynamic DNS and DNS hosting: Corpo but generally nice in terms of functionality, offering and usability: - https://cloudflare.com/ - rock solid, generous free tier, supports dynamic updates via API and a whole lot of open source and closed source dyndns updaters. They also sell domains at cost (i.e. they don’t make a profit off InterNIC reseller costs), but you have to host DNS with them. - https://porkbun.com/ - hands down my favourite domain registrar. Also offers free DNS hosting (I think for domains you got from them). Service based on Cloudflare. Non-profit/open source: - https://desec.io/ - solid, used them for years, EU based, completely open source infrastructure - https://www.duckdns.org/ - probably someone’s overgrown homelab project, but has been around for years - https://www.hetzner.com/dns-console/ - a nice EU based hosting provider with a bunch of services (including reasonably priced VMs). DNS hosting is free and supports dynamic updates. - a European Internet core ISP, provides a bunch of paid and free services, including free DNS hosting with dynamic updates via API support I hope these lists help you on your journey. Here’s an example of a website developed in Grav ( https://getgrav.org/ ), exported as static HTML, and hosted on Cloudflare pages via a git push: https://unifordental.ca/ Rouben William Park wrote:
Trying to help out few non-techie people, but I'm also interested personally...
How do you make few *static HTML* files available online for *free?*
I looked at
* Google Site -- you can't upload html file * Dropbox -- it shows you the text content of HTML files. * GitHub -- same thing.
Failing that, I'm considering
* Put the files on USB stick, and plug it into router. It has web/file server. I would have to register DDNS, though. * Set up web server on a Linux computer. But, I don't want to be "tech support".
Whoops! Hit “send” too soon: Meant to add Hetzner as a “nice” corpo option, not open source/non-profit. The last one under the “nice” corpo category is Hurricane Electric ( https://dns.he.net/ ) - not EU based, but seems reasonable. I’ve used their IPv6 tunnelling services back when I was stuck with Rogers and wanted IPv6 (Rogers did not support IPv6 back then): https://tunnelbroker.net/ Rouben rouben＠rouben.net wrote:
You can use any of the following. All of these have a free tier:
Static website hosting:
Big bad corpo ownership: - Github Pages: https://docs.github.com/en/pages - Cloudflare Pages: https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/ - Azure Static Websites/Webapps: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/static-web-apps/overview (there’s a free forever tier with storage/bandwidth limits and is unnecessarily complicated to use compared to the above; it’s a Microsoft “enterprise” product after all) - Oracle cloud storage: https://docs.oracle.com/en/learn/oci-api-gateway-web-hosting/index.html (also storage based, likely a few bucks if you exceed the “always free” limits; requires credit card to create the account)
Big bad corpo (non-free; in case there’s a desire to learn these things): - AWS S3 storage: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/hands-on/latest/host-static-website/host-static-... (a few bucks a month) - Google Cloud storage: https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/hosting-static-website (likely also a few bucks a month) - Azure storage: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blob-static-we... (also based on storage costs, which should be a few bucks monthly)
Non-profit/not so bad corpo ownership: - Gitlab Pages: https://docs.gitlab.com/user/project/pages/ - Codeberg Pages: https://docs.codeberg.org/codeberg-pages/
With regards to dynamic DNS and DNS hosting:
Corpo but generally nice in terms of functionality, offering and usability: - https://cloudflare.com/ - rock solid, generous free tier, supports dynamic updates via API and a whole lot of open source and closed source dyndns updaters. They also sell domains at cost (i.e. they don’t make a profit off InterNIC reseller costs), but you have to host DNS with them. - https://porkbun.com/ - hands down my favourite domain registrar. Also offers free DNS hosting (I think for domains you got from them). Service based on Cloudflare.
Non-profit/open source: - https://desec.io/ - solid, used them for years, EU based, completely open source infrastructure - https://www.duckdns.org/ - probably someone’s overgrown homelab project, but has been around for years - https://www.hetzner.com/dns-console/ - a nice EU based hosting provider with a bunch of services (including reasonably priced VMs). DNS hosting is free and supports dynamic updates. - a European Internet core ISP, provides a bunch of paid and free services, including free DNS hosting with dynamic updates via API support
I hope these lists help you on your journey. Here’s an example of a website developed in Grav ( https://getgrav.org/ ), exported as static HTML, and hosted on Cloudflare pages via a git push: https://unifordental.ca/
Rouben
William Park wrote:
Trying to help out few non-techie people, but I'm also interested personally... How do you make few *static HTML* files available online for *free?* I looked at * Google Site -- you can't upload html file * Dropbox -- it shows you the text content of HTML files. * GitHub -- same thing. Failing that, I'm considering * Put the files on USB stick, and plug it into router. It has web/file server. I would have to register DDNS, though. * Set up web server on a Linux computer. But, I don't want to be "tech support".
Thanks to all who replied. I got GitHub to serve out my files. - I was missing README.md. I thought it would default to "file server". - Go to "Setting" (top banner) | "Pages" (left column) | "main" branch (it was "none"). If URL is directory, then README.md is mandatory. Otherwise, you get 404. If URL is file, it serve out okay. So, I chose *GitHub Pages* to recommend. It's new for them, and new for me. Any "tech support" is also learning experience for me, too. So, it works out. I'll look into *GitHub Desktop*, later. At the moment, it's file by file on website. On 2025-10-19 01:27, William Park via Talk wrote:
Trying to help out few non-techie people, but I'm also interested personally...
How do you make few *static HTML* files available online for *free?*
I looked at
* Google Site -- you can't upload html file * Dropbox -- it shows you the text content of HTML files. * GitHub -- same thing.
Failing that, I'm considering
* Put the files on USB stick, and plug it into router. It has web/file server. I would have to register DDNS, though. * Set up web server on a Linux computer. But, I don't want to be "tech support".
participants (8)
-
David Collier-Brown -
Don Tai -
Karen Lewellen -
rouben＠rouben.net -
Scott Allen -
Stefan Kloppenborg -
Steve Litt -
William Park