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JavaScript Express Basics (2015) Doing more with Express Where do I go from here?

Posted by Krystal Jackson
Krystal Jackson
8,598 Points

How can I use what we've learn to build a real webpage? I do not want to build a rest API.

Where do I place the desired url address? What web service can I use to host it? Can I still use mongo even though I'm not using a rest api?

Nick Trabue
Nick Trabue
Courses Plus Student 12,666 Points

I would look into a host like Digital Ocean or AWS for deploying your application. These hosts will require you to configure your own server. I have not used AWS myself but I know Digital Ocean has some great guides available for configuring your server for your needs. I have not set up a MEAN stack server (though I will be soon hopefully) but their guide for creating a LAMP (Linux Apache MySql PHP) server was very solid.

Ryan Wittrup
Ryan Wittrup
9,156 Points
Ryan Wittrup
Ryan Wittrup
9,156 Points

There are a number of hosting services like AWS and Digital Ocean mentioned by @nicktrabue, but there are tons more from bigger names (Google, Microsoft) to smaller specialized services that focus only on hosting. On the negative side, there are so so many, but on the positive most offer free or very low cost options for single-page apps with low usage, so you can try some out and find what works best.

Most of those sites have a domain name registration feature when you sign up for a hosting plan, so that would let you request hosting at "www.KrystalsWebApp.com".

Regarding Mongo, or any database, without an API, I would have to ask what the purpose is for including that database then? If you just need to return some static data, a mocks file would probably work best and be quickest/easier IMO. I guess it depends on what you mean by "real webpage". A basic about me kind of site, maybe with a few tabs for a portfolio, resume, and contact details? - not really a need for a full backend.

A good exercise prior to deploying to a hosting service may be to try something like Heroku? That helped me understand configuring an Express app for a variable process environment since a lot of those hosting providers will be using containers and other tools to host multiple sites per machine. Heroku has a lot of good documentation, and there is a Treehouse course on bootstrap that includes deploying to Heroic as one of the last steps.