Overview #

Thanks to the wonderful #11ty and #webdev communities on Mastodon, I interacted with Pierre Carrier and learned about his great free web hosting project, xmit.co. To test it out, I migrated one website from an old shared hosting server and some others from Netlify. In both cases, moving to XMIT was easy.

As Pierre explained recently on Discord, the whole project is super small and minimalistic, taking a direct path from vision to inception. Wednesday, November 19^th, He shared this on Discord. Look how beautiful small xmit's production codebase is:

pcarrier@dog /s/xmit.co (main) [124]> tokei src
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 Language              Files        Lines         Code     Comments       Blanks
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 CSS                       1          241          201            0           40
 TSX                      11         2040         1951            1           88
 TypeScript                2           23           19            1            3
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 Total                    14         2304         2171            2          131
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I appreciate the minimalist/brutalist style of the project, even if it was rather disorienting to come from a fancy VC-backed host to something much more raw and independent. Personally, I love being back here amongst the #indieweb community and living with the ethos of early web development with modern tools.

Setup #

1. First, I signed up for an account over at xmit.com and then I started exploring the user interface.

2. As you can see from the screenshot above, the interface is no frills.
   1. Once you are logged in, please add a recovery email and phone number
   2. Next, you will need to decide whether you want to bring your own domain or use one of the two included subdomains. If you are going to bring your own domain, follow this helpful guide in the docs.

      1. Make sure your domain registrar allows you to use ANAME/ALIAS records. Then you will create an ANAME record for your team number at xmit.co. My team number is 268, so I will replace 42 in the examples below with my team number. The examples Pierre gives are repeated below

         @ CNAME 42.xmit.co. * CNAME 42.xmit.co.

      2. I found it very easy to create ANAME/ALIAS and CNAME records with the appropriate info, super easy. Personally, I went for the combo of an @ and a www. record for my domain names. One important note here is that you will need two records.. I had to go back and create www.xmit.000000076.xyz to get my sites working.

      3. For good measure, don't forget to also create the TXT record with your team number @ TXT "xmit=42" or in my case 268.

      4. If you decided to use one of the two included subdomains, you can skip these steps.

   3. Then, in your team marked by the 🏭 factory emoji, create your API keys. These are the keys you will use to deploy your site.
   4. Once the key is created, rename the key. In the box that pops up, type a name, and to save the key, press Enter; otherwise, the work you did won't save.
3. There are lots of ways to deploy your site. I chose to use GitHub Actions, so after naming my API key, I copied it and opened my repository in VS Code (my editor of choice), then created a file called .github/workflows/xmit-deploy.yml.
4. If you are going to use my .github/workflows/xmit-deploy.yml, please make sure and change the following line: XMIT_SITE: dominationchronicles.com@268 to be your domain name and team number. Based on the Discord chat, I think the number is only needed the first time, but your mileage may vary.
5. After creating this file, I went to GitHub.co >> my repository>> settings >> secrets and variables >> actions and created an action entitled XMIT_KEY where I then copied my XMIT API key. For all that is good and holy, never expose your API key publicly.
6. Once my API key was safe and tucked away inside ```XMIT_KEY ``, I then pushed my repo to GitHub, and in less than two minutes, my site was live!.

Thus far, I have been super happy with how hosting with XMIT has been going. I liked how easy it was, that there was no added bloat, and that it was a fairly turnkey, quick solution for web hosting.

If you do decide to host with XMIT, please also join the Discord; it is a helpful place.

Oh, and if you were wanting a more GUI-friendly deployment option, the newly released Bob's your Oncole can help.

Tags : website 11ty