[perlgeek]

The part where the author spent many hours to work around shared hosting really resonated with me. As a student I did the same, and some of my sites still bare the (technical) scars.

For example I used static pages, and the included dynamic elements through server side includes (SSI). But once you have multiple such dynamic pieces, they can't easily interact, and it all gets very messy.

And I realized that this is a very limiting approach. I spent much more money on other pastimes. You get a small virtual server for 5EUR/Month or less from OVH or Digital Ocean and probably many other providers. And that's enough for a website of mine that gets around 40k visitors per month.

[BorisMelnik]

serious question - why not just get a $4.99 fully functioning VPS from digital ocean or something?

[perlgeek]

I have one now.

But for me, this was back in 2006/2007 where VPS weren't that cheap, and I was very reluctant committing to recurring payments.