Deploying for Free

What the original required

Running PHP Subfolio meant operating a server: a PHP 5.6 host with Apache (mod_rewrite rules doing the routing, htaccess blocking direct access to config), a front controller that set a 2 GB memory limit for thumbnail generation, and a front-end deploy done by Grunt over SFTP with credentials in a .ftppass file. All of it on a runtime nobody patches anymore.

What the port costs

The deployment ADR’s first listed consequence: “cost/ops drop to ~zero.”

• The engine/demo → Cloudflare Pages (free tier). npm run deploy is wrangler pages deploy ./dist; pushing to main auto-deploys via GitHub Actions, gated on the smoke, SEO, and accessibility suites (.github/workflows/deploy.yml). Live at subfolio-astro.ilano.fyi with a .pages.dev fallback domain. The heavy work the PHP server did per-request — thumbnails, RSS, listings — happens once in CI, and the host serves files.
• This documentation site → GitHub Pages (free). Built with the official Astro action and deployed as a project site — chosen deliberately to mirror how AREA17 hosts the original Subfolio’s docs.
• If access control ever becomes real, the deferred auth Worker also fits Cloudflare’s free Workers tier — the ADR priced that path before choosing it.

The trade that pays for all this is the one named on Why the Port: publishing a new file means a rebuild — locally via watch, or a push that triggers the Pages deploy. For a portfolio gallery with mixed authoring cadence, that’s a build-minute, not a server bill.

The same content, either way

Because the port reads an unmodified Subfolio directory/ tree, “deploying for free” required no content migration: the same folder that a paid PHP host once served is what the free static pipeline builds from. The hosting bill was the only thing that didn’t carry over.