hosting and deployment workflow

[juliarosechin]

• compare different hosting solutions
  • decide on a hosting solution
• deploy the bot!
• archive parts of the README that become less relevant as a result

bonus [Exported to new issues]

• Implement GitHub actions to automatically update the live bot when main is modified #16
• Migrate data storage to a database #17

[SnowHawkeye]

Here are some resources:
Comparison of 5 services
Comparison of 8 services

For a first release, the simplest solution seems to be Sparked Host. For 1$ a month, it offers a very simple-to-use hosting service with enough (10GB) memory, and the possibility to add a database for future improvements. Support was really fast to reply (literal seconds after opening a ticket), which I hope will be also true once we're out of the free trial.

I have tried it with the 24h free trial and everything seems to work well for now. All that is left is to manage the account / billing, and we'll be good to go!

[SnowHawkeye]

I think the "bonuses" should be moved to other tasks because they could actually be pretty difficult to implement.

We can move them as we create the new milestones!

[SnowHawkeye]

A new "production" bot has been created so we can keep working on our PCs without impacting the bot that is deployed. The .env for the development version is the one we've been using, the .env for the new app has been uploaded in the "deployed" version.

The only remaining issue is that deploy-commands.js needs to be used on startup. Updating the startup command requires opening a ticket on SparkedHost, which I will do as soon as we move off the free trial version.

[SnowHawkeye]

The bot is now deployed on SparkedHost with the lowest spec paid plan (which is definitely enough for the foreseeable future).
The startup command of the server has also been updated to include deploy-commands.js.