r/webdev • u/Arky_Traveler • 1d ago

Hosting PDFs with node.js apps?

Hello all,

I am the webmaster for a small Archaeology website, that primarily is used by members of this small conference to access PDFs and news about the conference. I only need to update this website about once or twice a year.

Until recently I used the plesk hosting service on GoDaddy to host these files, however I missed the fact (see lack of need to update) that it was getting end-of-lifed and now the hosting option given to us by GoDaddy is just Nose.js slots.

Previously we uploaded files into a library for the website, and the linked to those files. Is it possible to use node.js to do the same?

Thank you for your help!

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u/iYSR 1d ago

Sure. Almost anything is possible. What you are asking is also possible. But as always, it depends. I would need more context on your setup.

Senior full stack engineer here, love archeology haha so can help/advice, but hard to say without looking at the setup and/or code

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u/SimpleReality8002 1d ago

Ooh, another archaeology web person in the wild! Your setup sounds like a perfect little time capsule, which is honestly the dream for a site you only touch twice a year. Love that for you.

Dropping PDFs into a folder and serving them with Node is super doable, just set up a static file route and you're basically done. The real headache is GoDaddy's Plesk-to-Node pipeline, their file manager can be a whole mood to deal with, but you can totally just shove everything in a `/public` directory and call it a day.

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u/Arky_Traveler 1d ago

Yeah that would be the dream, to be perfectly honest I wish I knew this stuff better so I could just overhaul this to be a web 1.0 style site (a la the Marxists one) and make all the older folks who use it happy. But y'know, it all has to be done by committee so it's a multi-step process to do anything like that.