On the contrary, it costs almost nil to handle traffic with an HTML/CSS static site, maybe 3x - 10x that with personalization, transactions, social, etc. Most info sites don’t need those.
Define popular? How about a billion hits?
Figure four servers for static HTML/CSS, maybe add CloudFront or similar if heavy on images or progressive download video, and 10 servers for dynamic personalization/transactions, for a billion personalized/e-commerce hits a month.
A billion hits averages to under 400 reqs/second, which you could handle on a single Pentium running Apache on BSD in late 90’s. Make it a bell curve, account for surges, 4 modern boxes is still comfy headroom for static stuff.
If hosting content is prohibitively expensive you could be doing it wrong. Try not firing up script interpreters and ‘frameworks’ per hit, use a static site gen CMS. If dynamic, spend time nailing caching.
It's a pity you're being downvoted - but I realize it's for being off-topic. I feel you make a very important point: we became so dependent on dynamic websites that it stifles growth even if in many (not all!) cases a static version would do just fine - and these can withstand massive amounts of hits.
If you make enemies, though, you're screwed - a good protection against DDoS attacks can be terribly expensive.
Comments
On the contrary, it costs almost nil to handle traffic with an HTML/CSS static site, maybe 3x - 10x that with personalization, transactions, social, etc. Most info sites don’t need those.
Define popular? How about a billion hits?
Figure four servers for static HTML/CSS, maybe add CloudFront or similar if heavy on images or progressive download video, and 10 servers for dynamic personalization/transactions, for a billion personalized/e-commerce hits a month.
A billion hits averages to under 400 reqs/second, which you could handle on a single Pentium running Apache on BSD in late 90’s. Make it a bell curve, account for surges, 4 modern boxes is still comfy headroom for static stuff.
If hosting content is prohibitively expensive you could be doing it wrong. Try not firing up script interpreters and ‘frameworks’ per hit, use a static site gen CMS. If dynamic, spend time nailing caching.
It's a pity you're being downvoted - but I realize it's for being off-topic. I feel you make a very important point: we became so dependent on dynamic websites that it stifles growth even if in many (not all!) cases a static version would do just fine - and these can withstand massive amounts of hits.
If you make enemies, though, you're screwed - a good protection against DDoS attacks can be terribly expensive.
I think you interpreted maintain too literally. For most sites you need to paid writers, designers, programmers, etc
Those all cost money.
GP had own site, said ‘information wants to be free’, I was talking about case where that gets popular.
I was not talking about media generated as placeholders for ads (sports, ‘news’, and reality television come to mind, as does click-bait).
Ah, fair enough
Apparently it doesn't cost money to produce content?