So I Tried Sudo-Flix...

So, just recently, I decided that: “Hey! It’d be fun to self-host this certain service that I use all the time!” and this entire blog post is me complaining about that decision.

For context, Sudo-Flix is a site that pulls movies and shows from different providers for completely free, and the service is not related to piracy at all. Crazy, right? Anyways, I had been using levrx’s Sudo-Flix site, and just recently it added.. crappy ad-based redirections. Basically, whenever you click the page it sends you to a crummy scam website. Lovely. So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to self-host a copy of the site. How bad could it possibly be?

Pretty bad. As a start, I selected the wrong output folder (/public instead of /dist) and it threw me off for over thirty minutes. Then, nothing was working on the site, even when I fixed the output folder. Turns out, I had to make a proxy website, which acts as a funnel for all the traffic in and out of the site. So, after getting the proxy up and running after a good while, apparently I still needed a backend (a server that interacts with the video distributors). After searching the documentation for hours I finally found the section I was looking for: a free community backend. I thought that that was perfect, and exactly what I needed, but to my very large misfortune the person who ran the community backend forgot to pay the bill for the backend the day before I started.

Now, I’m confused. I desperately attempted to figure out a way to host my own, which I learned was far too complicated, and can’t be done using Netlify, my host of choice. I’m at a loss. I attempt to dig through the documentation to find out some way to fix my broken mess, and there wasn’t anything I could do. I nearly died in my chair.

And here, my viewers, is where I end my tale. Not on a good note, but on a note of uncertainty and disappointment. Never have I ever ended a project with these feelings, but I guess that’s how it goes sometimes.

You can find my (albeit terrible) self hosted implementation at movies.archiiv.cc. I will try to add more functionality in the coming days, and the implementation still works with certain shows and movies (I watched Jurassic Park on there). I suggest using “sudo-flix.rip” if you want a really good quality experience with the service.

UPDATE: I’m working with different fetchers and scapers, in an attempt to get this thing to be better.

Anyways, I’ve been ARCHIIV, and I hope you got something out of this post. Thanks for visiting.