The Info-Site: A Name for Something Small Businesses Actually Need

Source: Dev.to

The Problem

A small, professional, growing call‑center needed a web presence so potential partners and clients could quickly understand what the business does and how to reach it.

Options Considered

None of these fit. The client didn’t need e‑commerce, a blog, a booking system, or a marketing funnel. He only needed to answer three questions clearly:

1. Who are you?
2. What do you do?
3. How do I reach you?

There was no clean, named solution for exactly that.

The Solution: Info‑Site

Using AI as a tool in my stack (the same way I’d use any other tool), we built what I now call an info‑site.

What It Is

• A single index.html file (plus one logo image)
• Hosted on the client’s own server
• Exposed publicly via a Cloudflare Tunnel (zero open inbound ports)
• Served by an Nginx virtual host on a dedicated port
• Reachable at a custom sub‑domain via Cloudflare DNS

Total monthly cost: $0 – no subscriptions, no third‑party platforms, full client ownership of every byte.

Technical Stack

Nginx Configuration

server {
    listen 8085;
    server_name info.rnaconnection.com;
    root /home/rna-info;
    index index.html;
    autoindex off;
    server_tokens off;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

Save the file (e.g., /etc/nginx/sites-available/rna-info) and enable it:

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/rna-info /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/rna-info
nginx -t && systemctl restart nginx

Cloudflare Tunnel Configuration (/etc/cloudflared/config.yml)

hostname: info.rnaconnection.com
service: http://localhost:8085

Register the DNS route and restart the tunnel:

cloudflared tunnel route dns info.rnaconnection.com
systemctl restart cloudflared

That’s the entire deployment – no Docker container, no reverse‑proxy manager, no certificate management (Cloudflare terminates TLS at the edge).

You can see the live example at info.rnaconnection.com – a bilingual call‑center and workforce‑solutions company based in Mexico. Single HTML file, self‑hosted, custom sub‑domain, zero monthly cost.

Why Call It an Info‑Site?

The web industry has terms for most things – landing pages, brochure sites, marketing sites, portfolios – but none capture this exact purpose. Those terms carry implicit assumptions about conversion, branding, lead generation, or showcasing work.

An info‑site:

• Doesn’t try to close the visitor.
• Doesn’t run A/B tests on button colors.
• Doesn’t ask for email addresses.
• Exists to give someone who already has a reason to be interested everything they need to understand the business and make contact.

Core Characteristics

• Informational first – content organized around understanding, not conversion.
• Self‑hosted & fully owned – no platform dependency, no subscription risk.
• Single‑file (or near‑single‑file) – lightweight, fast, easy to maintain.
• Static – no database, no backend, minimal attack surface.
• Sub‑domain based – typically lives at info.yourdomain.com, separate from any main site.

The Gap It Fills

Most of my clients are small‑ and mid‑size businesses in Hermosillo, Sonora. The gap between “no web presence” and “full website” is enormous in cost and complexity, and many businesses fall into it without a good option.

The info‑site bridges that gap cleanly:

• A developer or sysadmin can build one in a few hours.
• Anyone who can edit an HTML file can maintain it.
• Hosting cost is zero if you already run any kind of server.
• Looks professional because it is professional – just focused.

For businesses that already self‑host (Nextcloud, OMV, Proxmox, etc.), it fits naturally into existing infrastructure: one more Nginx vhost, one more Cloudflare tunnel entry. Done.

Closing Thoughts

Naming things matters in our field. A named concept can be referenced, discussed, improved, and built upon. “Info‑site” is short, descriptive, and immediately understandable – more than most jargon manages.

If you’ve built something like this for a client and called it something else, or struggled to explain what it was, now you have a word for it.

And if you’re an IT professional who occasionally finds yourself solving problems that aren’t strictly in your lane: that’s not a bug in your career. That’s what being useful actually looks like.

Hendry Ruiz
Hendry Ruiz is an independent IT professional and MSP based in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, with 20+ years of experience in infrastructure, networking, VoIP, and systems administration. He operates OpControl I.T. Solutions, providing managed IT services for small and mid‑size businesses.