Hosting at the Web

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For few of our problems we will need to host some simple pages (and later simple scripts) at the web.

If you are not acquainted with such things, I hope that these short notes may help you.

Basically speaking, you need to choose some hosting provider which allows you to create your own site and store your stuff there. For learning purposes it is OK to choose Free hostings.

To choose your hosting properly you need to consider which programming language you are going to use. While "static" (i.e. unchanged) web-pages do not require running scripts (and programming at all) - the could be hosted almost anywhere including GitHub Pages - CodeAbbey itself stores some materials (including your certificates) in this manner.

However for "dynamic" pages, which are generated by some short programs (written by you) hosting needs to support your favorite language. Since PHP is probably most popular language in the web, most of them support it. Meanwhile many of CodeAbbey users prefer Python which makes things bit more tricky. Below I list few variants for you

• PythonEveryWhere - I strongly recommend this for Python programmers allows hosting Python applications using more modern (and bit more complicated) wsgi interface - it is quite popular for it provides easy deployment of several popular Python web-frameworks (like Django and Flask) - start with this short manual to learn how to work with this;
• AwardSpace and AtWebpages allows easy hosting for PHP scripts, also supports other languages utilizing cgi interface;
• Project Web at SourceForge also allows running Python but of version 2.4.3 which is somewhat outdated - and you will need to work with it with SSH / SFTP which may be bit hard if you are not acquainted with console (but it is cool for training your console skills on other hand!);
• Heroku and Google AppEngine provide similar service, though in more abstract infrastructure - so you may prefer them if you are acquainted with these platforms (or want to learn them - they have demos etc).
• SDF / freeshell - it's not completely free, but I recommend it as it allows forever access for one-time small fee (free registration, static web and shell access; $1-3 for dynamic CGI scripts using shell interpreters; $36 for PHP, Python and others);

So if you know no better option I dare to suggest you try AwardSpace (with PHP if you use some C/Java-like language, or with Python in CGI mode) or PythonAnywhere (with slightly more advanced Python techniques).

If you want to be "like a geek" and learn SSH / shell tools along the way - SourceForge or SDF / freeshell options are for you. The latter also allows outbound connections which is useful if you create web applications fetching information from other sites or interchanging with social networks etc.

If you want to user other languages like Java, or Ruby, or C#, or JavaScript - you probably need to find your own way. I believe that Heroku and OpenShift provide some free solutions for most of them.

Meanwhile I dare to say that when you go learning web-development it may be easier to change to more suitable (or more supported) language rather than struggle with one you know. For example to write CodeAbbey I switched to PHP (with which I was then unfamiliar) from Java (which I use at work).

Local Server

Besides choosing a hosting it is wise to use some "local" server for development and testing - so that you can install it on your own computer and run your web-pages without uploading them to remote server after each modification.

I personally prefer to use XAMPP which contains PHP + MySQL + httpd server (and some other stuff) which you can setup in just a few clicks of the mouse.