Where do you host this?

[seanjkanderson]

Hi @abrasseu,

Not an issue but a question on hosting and CMS as I'm brand new to website design (but have a coding background). I have a photography website written in PHP and I am loathing converting it to a wordpress theme. I'm unsure of how to host it and thought you would have some good thoughts. It appears you're not really using a database, all the content is written in the php/html and the images are in an images directory with numbering.

In terms of hosting, do you just find a site host such as godaddy that has all the project dependencies (e.g. laravel)?
Then for content management, how is your client updating his word and photo content? Is he tech savvy and ssh's into the server?

[abrasseu]

Hi @seanjkanderson !

Currently this website is hosted on a Shared Website Hosting from OVH (quite like godaddy). It provides easy set up but may lack of customization (cannot SSH): you simply drop the files (including dependencies) on the FTP server and it runs. Also I find it quite expensive (around 50€/year). You can check Google Cloud free program, it offers quite a lot of good products. I think you can use Google App Engine to easily deploy a PHP website.

A backoffice is integrated in the website for the photographer to easily change the folders and upload photos. The uploaded photos are stored on the FTP server as simple files and all the other data (folder configuration, etc...) is in a database so the website is dynamic. It's easier for the photographer but requires a database. If you wan't to skip the database you can create a simple configuration, parse it in PHP (or another language) and display the photos from the config. You can even use a static site generator like Gatsby and push the generated files when you want to update the content.

I hope this will help you, don't hesitate to reach me if you have any question or issue :)

Have a good day