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Month: July 2020

  • # articleJul 20, 2020· 8 min

    DIY Video Hosting

    <p>I've been a paying customer of Vimeo since 2014 – specifically, their Pro plan. But when my renewal email arrived in April, myself and other small developers were seeing sales slow down as the pandemic worsened. Another $240/year was a tough sell for the small amount of video content I was hosting with them, and I wondered if there might be a cheaper alternative – either another service or by hosting videos myself.</p> <p>So this is how I moved off Vimeo and started hosting my own video content.</p> <p>On average, my bandwidth bill has dropped to $11/month – and that includes videos, static assets, and ALSO binary downloads for all of my Mac apps. Previously, I was paying $20/month <em>just</em> for video hosting on top of the rest of my bandwidth.</p> <p>It's definitely a geekier solution that requires more work up front to setup, and I'm not sure I would recommend it for a "real" business, but for my needs it was a fun project and I'm happy to save $200 a year.</p>

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  • # articleJul 15, 2020· 8 min

    Process

    <p>To keep myself sane while dealing with my work deadlines, I've found myself tinkering around with an idea I've wanted to try building for years now. Oddly enough, it's not yet-another-app, but a website (web service, maybe?). And it's actually something that's designed to be self-hosted. I haven't yet decided if it will (eventually) be open source, or if I might solicit feedback from friends (real and online) just in case it's more useful than I think.</p> <p>Sometimes the idea for something new comes in a flash of inspiration. And other times (as in the current case) it meanders around in the back of my head for years – just waiting for the right moment or combination of external factors.</p> <p>For this project, it's the result of the rebirth of the indie web movement, my long time interest in self-hosting and owning the tools and data I run my business with, and Apple's WWDC announcements about Safari and their OS's upcoming privacy improvements.</p>

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