Day 8 of Change: The Aggregator Idea and My Battle with Hosting

I didn’t write an article yesterday — not because I forgot, or gave up, but because I was sick. Really sick. Not sick to the point of dying, but sick enough that everything felt dull. I didn’t want to use that as an excuse — I even debated whether I should mention it here. But this journey is about honesty, so I’m putting it out there.

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Today, I woke up with the urge to get back on track. I felt this need to build something that truly matters to me. That’s when a new idea struck me:

What if I built a platform — an Opportunity Aggregator — that collects and organizes all the hackathons, internships, workshops, and other events I’m eligible for?

A single place, just for me (or people like me), where I wouldn’t have to hunt through 10 different sites every week. It felt like the right idea — something meaningful.

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While I was trying to brainstorm how to actually build this, I somehow ended up on YouTube — classic. I don’t even remember what I went there for. But as if the universe was nudging me, I stumbled upon a video from n8n NetworkChuck.

Now, I had heard of n8n before — it’s that open-source automation tool — but I never really looked into it. This time, I did.

And suddenly, everything clicked.
I realized:
“Wait. I can build the aggregator with n8n.”

I got excited — the kind of excitement that makes you stop thinking and just start building. I opened up tutorials, began experimenting, and figured out I’d need to self-host n8n to really make it work the way I want.

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That’s when the real struggle began.

I started looking for free hosting options:

• Oracle Cloud

• Google Cloud

• Hostinger

• And more...

Each one either required a credit card, or payment, or both — and I had neither. I felt stuck.

But then, I found a possible savior: Render.
Some random YouTube video mentioned it had a free tier, so I jumped on it.

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I managed to set up hosting and deployed n8n. I started testing flows, and for a moment, it felt like I was finally on the path. Then I got up to eat or do something else.

When I came back, I opened my browser, refreshed my hosted app — and nothing. It was down.

Turns out, Render free tier goes inactive if there's no request for 15 minutes.

So yeah… all my work, temporarily gone.

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I wasn’t ready to quit.

I went back, read the documentation, watched more videos, and researched all the limitations of Render’s free tier.
That’s when I came up with a workaround. I decided to piece the system together using:

• Supabase – for the database

• Upstash Redis – for caching

• Backblaze B2 – for object storage

• Cron jobs – to keep things alive and moving

It was a patchwork plan, but it could work.

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Of course, not everything went smoothly.

• Supabase gave me an error first — but I fixed it.

• Redis? I tried to integrate it, but it just wouldn’t work no matter what I did. After hours of tinkering, I gave up and removed Redis from the system.

And just like that… the day was over.