best setup for static sites?

July 1, 2013 16.3k views
m73mitchell
By:
m73mitchell
Hi, what would I need to install to setup a static site on Digital Ocean? just with html pages and a css file?
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7 Answers
bersling April 29, 2016

I answered this question here:
http://www.bersling.com/2016/04/29/host-static-files-with-apache-on-digitalocean/

Basically just sudo apt-get install apache2 and replace the index.html file at /var/www/html with the html you want to serve. That’s it!

pablo July 2, 2013
@m73mitchell,

If I remember correctly, on Amazon, you can also host static files on CloudFront @ cheaper rates than on S3.

RE: uploading files to your DO droplet, you can use VSFTP, SCP, Rsync, etc. It all depends on where the files are being uploaded from, among other considerations (such as security).
kamaln7 MOD July 1, 2013
nginx would be the best webserver for static files:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-install-nginx-on-ubuntu-12-04-lts-precise-pangolin
How To Install nginx on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin)
by Etel Sverdlov
This tutorial explains how to install nginx, how to start nginx, and how to confirm that nginx is running on your server. nginx is a high performance web server software. This tutorial is written for Ubuntu 12.04
m73mitchell July 1, 2013
Would you know what else I'd need. Amazon has a detailed tutorial about how to host a static site in an S3 bucket, which is obviously not available on DO. I like Digital Ocean, but without further instructions I might take it Amazon. Maybe this is an article someone could write up and submit to DO. I hear they pay $50 for each published article.
pablo July 1, 2013
@m73mitchell,

Why not follow the Amazon tutorial and apply it to DO? I do that all the time w/tutorials from Linode.
m73mitchell July 2, 2013
@Pablo, thanks, that's what I wanted to do, but I assumed there was something special about S3 buckets (which is what hosts static sites on Amazon), such that I couldn't apply that tutorial to DO.

I guess I'm wrong then? The thing is I think it's easy to get a file into an S3 bucket but I'm not sure how to do it on DO without using a Ruby deployment script and my static site won't have ruby...
gavin.chapman July 2, 2013
I'd pick your favourite distribution and put nginx on there. Then SFTP the files up to the directory. By default nginx files go in /usr/share/nginx/html/
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