I wanted to put up some simple webapps. In the past, I’ve always had an Internet-connected server handy for such a purpose – either in a spare room in my house or a cheap VPS (I miss you unixshell!) But I don’t anymore. So where to put these webapps? Even a t2.nano is $40 a month! Turns out there is a great solution: GitHub Pages. What makes this great?

• The code is already in GitHub anyway
• It’s super simple to turn your repository into a hosted webapp – just go into the repository settings, scroll to the “GitHub Pages” section and select a branch to serve from. Now the index.html in your repository will be loaded when someone goes to a URL like https://you.github.io/your-repo/

And BOOM now you have free hosting of your webapp (if all the logic is client-side).

For an example, check out my simulator for evaluating different toilet-seat strategies. (code)

Or my estate tax calculator. (code)

Both are simple webapps where all the logic is implemented in client-side javascript. And hosted for free! Thank you GitHub!