nodeJS and Websockets for my github pages site

[frail plume]

Hi!

I recently watched the nodeJS and websockets video series while following along and got the multi user drawing sketch all up and running.

I want to play around with nodeJS and socket.io some more and create some fun little projects. But I also want to be able to say to my friends "hey come to this page on my website and look at this cool server thing" (like the multi user drawing canvas).

My website is hosted on GitHub pages and as I understand it, it only hosts static files, so I can't just dump my server.js in there and expect things to work. What are my alternatives? Do I have to pay for a server from some provider and if so can I get my github page to "pull" from there? Can this be done for free? Completely new to server side programming so not quite sure how this stuff works:)

[ashen nacelle]

there are various hosting services on which you can host your node server. (both free and paid)

heroku used to be a good free option, but they have removed their free tier

tbh i don't rly know what are good free services right now, maybe someone else can tell

[frail plume]

I ended up creating a VM with google cloud and hosting it on there which worked fine after a little learning curve, i guess I can just link to there from my github page, thanks:)