Heroku is life and Squarespace is not (if you’re a developer)
By: Patrick Collins
Tags: Web Development, Heroku, Ssl, Happy, Squarespace

Well, I set up my first real web application, hooray….

However, it looks like my last article was nowhere near the best way to do it, and I hit even MORE bumps finishing it out, and then I took an hour and redid everything 10x easier.

I guess such is life yes?

Let’s just get a few things straight. Learn from me, please.

1. If you are a developer/have any javascript or any coding skills, don’t use Squarespace

Just save yourself the headache and don’t. Don’t use them for domains, don’t use them for their coding product. Don’t use them.

Squarespace is great if you are non-technical (I feel I have to show them some love) but if you’re a developer there are much better places to go.

Before I continue, there is something I have to explain. You can have a Domain provider and a Web provider. These are different. A domain provider is the company that holds your domain name (like google.com) a web provider hosts the code (like the HTML/javascript files).

Squarespace has a ton of restrictions on what you can do with your code, including not using any of it unless you pay more. And even when you DO pay more, you are restricted to what you can do with that code. So they are not a great web provider. If you get a domain with them, the ONLY way for you to get SSL/HTTPS is if you use one of their custom build-a-site products. You can’t host the code someplace else in being secure

Shout-out to the brave browser, desktop v1.0 hopefully coming soon…

For those of you who don’t know, it’s that little lock icon on the top of your page that tells you whether or not people can steal the data you send. See this image.

So, they are also, not a great domain provider. You have to do EVERYTHING with them, or they say “sorry, your site is crap now”

Example of your site being crap now….

However… Their support was really good… Except that my first few interactions with them when I was like “why is my site crap” they told me “oh, you probably did some DNS things wrong, just wait and it will be fine”. And then I found the document that said that they don’t support third-party web hosted code and SSL, they were like “oh.. yeah that too”.

So that was fun.

But they were really fast to respond and very personable, which a guy like me really appreciated.

2. Don’t both using a static web page and trying to get SSL/HTTPS

Just don’t. Save yourself the headache.

You can totally host a page, but it won’t be secure. These instructions do a great job of helping you set something up on google cloud (and once I switched to google domains, which DOES allow third-party SSL). But they DON’T go into how to get SSL.

This StackOverflow question says you can do it… But maybe I am just a noob? I don’t know….

Do your self a favor and make your page dynamic. Don’t use google storage or AWS S3, use app engine, Heroku, or whatever AWS’s thing for building an app is. Or just use Heroku because after this week I love Heroku.

3. Use Heroku and google domains

This seemed to be the best combination I could find.

Heroku literally holds your hand through the process if you need it, or if you are a PRO, you can just do your thing.

Davie504 — slap like now

Heroku will give you an ssl certificate for you if you get one of their paid dynos (like $7 a month?). And it’s basically one commands.

heroku cert:auto:enable

Here’s a link for more information.

Google Domains also seems very direct and to the point... And let’s heroku be amazing.

4. You have to have your website redirect to HTTPS through your application

I’m not sure why this isn’t an option for DNS yet…. Or maybe it is and I missed it.

Here is a chunk of code if you’re using node.js and express that will always make your site redirect to https:

So those were some of the pitfalls I ran into and how I overcame them.

I went from domain host Squarespace, web host google cloud, SSL provider Namecheap -> SSL and Web host Heroku, domain provider google.

Whew. And now I sit back and smile that it is actually working. Yay!!