How We Built And Hosted A Dynamic Website for Free

AcademiaScribes was built to thrive, and we had a clear goal from the start: create a fully functional website at zero cost. This wasn't just a challenge - it was a necessity. We carefully planned our strategies before launch to ensure we could operate with minimal expenses, if any at all. I think I need to stress on the fact that AcademiaScribes is not just a team of writers, but also hosts a bunch of developers/programmers who can achieve more with code. 

Our website leveraged platforms, development tools, and packages that are either entirely free or offer generous free tiers that adequately support our operations. Businesses that typically lack an online presence often face significant barriers due to the initial costs of launching a website. The substantial expenses proposed by developers can be quite discouraging for many business owners. Moreover, when coupled with ongoing maintenance costs, establishing an online presence can become a daunting task. In the first few months, this digital venture may feel like a money pit, benefiting developers more than the businesses themselves, especially when tangible traffic gains are yet to be realized. Consequently, many businesses end up abandoning their online efforts after a few months without seeing any significant returns, with a considerable portion of their investment wasted on website hosting fees.

So if you're looking to host a website that goes beyond static elements, you're in the right place. Our site incorporates a database, backend code, image management with caching and optimization, SEO features, and more - all without any upfront costs. Even better, we set up professional email addresses tied to our domain - completely free.

The most compelling part? You can run a similar website with zero overhead costs for years. The only expense you'll face is the annual domain renewal, typically around $11. For business owners aiming to establish an online presence, this approach can be a game-changer. And we can make you achieve this, probably at half the price it could have incurred you. Just contact us.

We're not here to peddle hot air. Instead, we want to share our experience and show you what's possible. If you're curious about how we did it and how you could do the same, read on. We'll break down our process, the tools we used, and the lessons we learned along the way.

It All Starts With The Code: Efficient Technologies for Website Development

When it comes to creating a website, efficiency and cost-effectiveness go hand in hand. If you're aiming to be budget-conscious, it's crucial to consider the underlying technology that will power your site. Our website, for instance, utilizes Svelte, a modern JavaScript framework, and this choice was deliberate for several reasons. We’ll get into details on why we did not just go for WordPress, Wix and the rest later.

Svelte offers a gentler learning curve for developers. Its syntax closely resembles standard JavaScript conventions, making it accessible to those already familiar with the language. This means developers can quickly become productive, potentially reducing development time and costs. 

More importantly, Svelte shines in terms of performance and efficiency. Unlike more widely-known frameworks such as React, Svelte compiles your code during the build process rather than interpreting it in real-time. This approach results in significantly smaller file sizes – Svelte typically produces output around 2.1KB, compared to React's 41.2KB. For you, the website owner, this translates to faster load times and improved overall performance. The fact that svelte came way later than React and the rest of the frameworks, might be due to the fact that maybe the developer found persistent flaws, in terms of design and performance, that were inherent in such frameworks. We needed to rethink how we actually build websites, without losing much of the glory and complicating things.

The benefits extend beyond just speed. Svelte's approach leads to leaner, more manageable code. This can make future updates and maintenance easier and potentially less costly. Additionally, Svelte-based websites often see a boost in search engine optimization (SEO). Web crawlers, the tools search engines use to index websites, can more easily parse and understand Svelte-generated content compared to some other frameworks. While modern crawlers have improved their ability to handle various technologies, Svelte's straightforward output gives it an edge in ensuring your site's content is fully recognized and ranked appropriately.

So, when you choose efficient technologies like Svelte, you can create a fast, easily maintainable website that performs well both for users and search engines, all while potentially keeping development and hosting costs in check.

Why We Avoided WordPress and Wix: Customization and Performance

You might wonder why we didn't opt for popular platforms like WordPress or Wix. The reasons are compelling. Websites built with these platforms often have a distinct, recognizable look. While WordPress powers an impressive 43.5% of the internet and dominates 62.7% of the CMS market, we believe your website should stand out from the crowd.

WordPress offers numerous free and paid themes, but this abundance can lead to a lack of uniqueness. Minor tweaks to a common theme rarely result in a truly distinctive site. Moreover, the customization options, while extensive, have limitations that can stifle creativity and future growth. I understand most people will not have a problem with setting up Wordpress; they just want to get up and running in no time. However, at AcademiaScribes, we value the freedom to evolve. Your website should be able to grow and change with your needs. You might want to refresh its look or even perform a complete overhaul down the line. This level of flexibility is best achieved by building a website from scratch.

Another concern with platforms like WordPress and Wix is their reliance on plugins. While these add-ons can be useful, they often come with overhead and potential compatibility issues if not properly maintained. We advocate for leaner websites, free from unnecessary bloat that could hamper performance.

We believe that crucial aspects like SEO and site speed are best addressed through careful attention to your website's core structure and functionality. By building our own site, we can ensure every element serves a purpose, contributing to a faster, more efficient, and uniquely tailored online presence. In essence, our approach allows for a website that's not just a carbon copy of thousands of others, but a true reflection of your brand's identity and goals.

Free Database Management: Leveraging Appwrite for Efficiency

Databases are the lifeblood of dynamic websites, enabling them to be interactive and potentially more SEO-friendly. They store crucial information like blog posts, user data, login credentials, and newsletter subscriptions. However, managing databases traditionally comes with significant challenges.

Setting up and maintaining databases can be a daunting task. The risks are substantial - a single mistake could result in the loss of thousands of entries. Horror stories abound of developers accidentally deleting entire databases without proper backups, leading to nightmarish scenarios. Moreover, database migration during server changes or hosting transitions presents another layer of complexity and potential data loss risk.

At AcademiaScribes, we recognized these challenges and sought an innovative solution. After careful consideration, we opted for Appwrite, a modern managed database service that offers a refreshing alternative to conventional database management.

Appwrite provides a user-friendly interface for setting up databases, collections, and attributes. It allows for easy configuration of security settings and permissions with minimal coding required. This approach eliminates the need for time-consuming traditional database setup processes, which often involve server configuration, SSH access, package installations, and troubleshooting - tasks that could consume an entire day or more. With Appwrite, you will be accessing data through an API in your frontend code, bringing a breath of fresh air on how we access databases. 

The platform offers a generous free tier that comfortably meets our current needs and provides room for growth. Beyond database functionality, Appwrite also includes features like storage management and image optimization (Something which I’ll talk about later), offering a comprehensive solution for various web development needs.

By choosing Appwrite, we've streamlined our development process, enhanced data security, and future-proofed our website infrastructure. This decision allows us to focus more on creating valuable content and improving user experience, rather than grappling with complex database management tasks.

Where We Hosted Our Website, For Free

In the past (and currently, LoL), hosting a website typically involved renting server space from cloud infrastructure providers like DigitalOcean, AWS, Linode, or Google Cloud. These companies often entice new customers with attractive promotions, such as free server setups for the first two months. After the promotional period, users would transition to paid plans, usually starting around $5 per month for the most basic package.

However, these entry-level options often came with significant limitations. Most operated on just 1GB of memory with a shared CPU, constraining performance and scalability. Moreover, the responsibility for configuring and maintaining the server environment fell entirely on the website owner. This DIY approach could be daunting and fraught with potential pitfalls – one wrong move could lead to a host of problems.

Enter the concept of serverless hosting, a game-changing solution championed by platforms like Vercel and Netlify. This model is too good to resist, and we really had to go for it as AcademiaScribes. These services recognized the frustrations inherent in traditional hosting models and developed an appealing alternative. Their generous free tiers, offering up to 100GB of data transfer per month, are more than sufficient for most websites, even those that have been operating for a couple of years.

The serverless model eliminates the headaches associated with server setup and maintenance. Instead of wrestling with server configurations, users can focus on their website's content and functionality. The process is remarkably straightforward: you simply push your website code to a GitHub repository and then link that repository to Vercel or Netlify. But there is a catch, in most cases, you can only host frontend code, no server access. However, this is easily solved by using Appwrite for database management and calling their API on your frontend code. If you really want to hide credentials or feel that some functionalities are so critical to run on your users’ browser, then Svelte takes care of this by enabling you to write code that will only run on the server side. Problem solved.

Serverless approach introduces a powerful feature: automatic deployments. Whenever you push an update to your GitHub repository, the hosting platform automatically syncs these changes and updates your live website accordingly. This seamless integration streamlines the development and deployment process, making it easier to keep your site up-to-date.

Adopting this serverless model helped AcademiaScribes bypass the minimum $5 monthly fees and the complexities of server management common in other hosting providers. The serverless platform takes care of the infrastructure, allowing you to concentrate on creating and improving your website. This shift not only saves money but also time and effort, making web hosting more accessible and manageable for developers of all skill levels.

We specifically went for Vercel and not Netlify, not due to superiority, but out of personal preference, since they both offer more or less similar packages. There are also other serverless platforms such as Cloudflare Pages and DigitalOcean App Platform which might offer even more generous tiers. Check them out.

Free Email Server: Professional Emails with Zoho

Having an email that is tied to your domain exudes professionalism and trustworthiness. At AcademiaScribes, we needed to have professional emails that reflect our website without spending much on email servers. Traditionally, this would have been achieved by setting up an email service on the server where you host your website. However, the technicalities involved are mind-boggling. You would need to install an email server and configure various records like MX, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to ensure proper email delivery and security. Even if you successfully set up the email service, your outgoing emails would have to fight being marked as spam by Google for a longer period of time before gaining Google’s trust. This means that in most cases, your customers might never see your emails, as they could all end up in the spam folder.

To avoid these challenges, we opted for Zoho. And they are really good. Even though setting up records like MX and the rest are inevitable, in Zoho, the process is clear and streamlined. Their free tier offers 5GB of storage per user and allows you to set up up to 5 email accounts tied to your domain, which is sufficient for our needs. They have an email app that you can use to communicate with your customers, ensuring that your emails are not marked as spam. Additionally, Zoho's user-friendly interface and robust security features make it an excellent choice for managing professional emails.

Finally, Storage And Image Optimization, All The Goodies For Free

I promised earlier that I would revisit this topic. We host our images on Appwrite, but with a strategic approach to ensure we make the most of their free storage. Appwrite's free tier has a storage cap, and if you don't optimize your image uploads, you might end up depleting it sooner than you think.

So, what strategy did we employ? We made sure that the images we upload are all under 50KB. Yes, that's right—very small. But we didn't stop there. These images are further optimized in our blogs using Appwrite's image optimization functionalities. This reduces the file size even more and converts our images to the WebP format, which is highly recommended due to its excellent compression rate. The result? Faster loading images on your webpage thanks to smaller transfer rates.

With this design, you can host a large number of images on Appwrite without worrying about exhausting the platform’s 2GB storage limit on their free tier. It's a win-win situation—optimized images lead to faster load times and efficient use of storage.

The End Result

With all these strategies implemented from the ground up, we ended up spending only $11 on domain name registration, which is renewable annually. The website runs entirely free, which is very ideal, especially for a newly established website that is yet to gain any traction. Imagine paying hosting and maintenance fees every month for a website that does not gain any significant traffic in its initial months? It's very counterintuitive, and draining, to say the least. This model allowed us to run our website very cheaply while waiting for it to gain traction, and the results have been fruitful. In barely 5 months after hosting the website, we had over 1.8K visitors and still counting. Similarly, we got 50.2K impressions according to the Google Search Console; still, with zero Ad campaigns, no backlink strategies and the likes, just organic growth with a proper SEO strategy in mind. This means you can achieve good metrics while ensuring your newly established website maintains a cost of $0.

Partying short? You might be asking yourself how you can set up this $0 cost model. If you are a developer, you already have the answers. If you are a businessperson not really into web development, you have proof that we can set up a website for you with such a model and probably at half the price you could have incurred from another developer. So do not hesitate to reach out to us through our contact information below.