Consider using something besides GitHub Pages for hosting in the front end curriculum

[lilliealbert]

GitHub pages is neat, but requires learning Git, which is a pretty major departure from the other stuff you learn in the Front End curriculum.

What if we used a different service with a free tier?

Maybe:

• https://www.firebase.com/pricing.html
• https://www.netlify.com/pricing

Or something else?

[rachelmyers]

Sounds good to me. :+1:

[nuclearsandwich]

I'm not at all opposed, I know first, second, and thirdhand how much overhead Git adds. What method do those services use to upload content? Is it browser based or FTP or some dedicated tool or application?

[nuclearsandwich]

Also worth mentioning, today repository file uploads for Git repositories was made available, which, if the other tools are web-based upload, might be comparable with a much more generous free tier.

[SteveBarnett]

The front pages of Firebase and Netlify look scary to me! :grimacing: All this plans and pricing and database stuff. I wonder if it might not look too intimidating to a Front-End newbie?

How about JSBin, CodePen, or Thimble instead?

• JSBin is great because it's minimal and light. It's the one I use a lot when teaching peeps bits of Front-end.
• CodePen is great because it has "power features" (like preprocessors) and has a whole community / gallery thing going on (for inspiration).
• Thimble is great for "intro to Front-End" and Mozilla has loads of learnings resources around it.

[wuworkshop]

If students just need a place to host static sites, perhaps http://surge.sh/?

[SteveBarnett]

Surge is pretty groovy, but does still require using the terminal, and npm (which means having node). I like the three above because they don't require any coding to deploy (although, granted, not "real" "deploy"s). :)