Run solidity/deploy ethereum smart contract on a website

Question

Does anyone know if I can deploy my own smart contract or run/host a solidity code via my own website? I am following this Youtube tutorial by Decypher Media.

If I'm correct, the testrpc address localhost:8545 means that I am deploying the contract as being part of a private blockchain that is only local to my pc, right? This is the case for development. So if I would want to actually deploy the contract as an actual Ethereum node or to the Ethereum blockchain itself, would I just have to replace the localhost:8545 with the actual URL? I am not totally familiar with this yet, but I am really trying to develop something on Ethereum.

I am looking at creating a contract that sends a token to a dynamic number of eth addresses (i.e. today I may have to send tokens to 10 eth addresses, tomorrow I may do it for 15). So, instead of firing the contract for each token which would be time-consuming, I would like to do it automatically/seamlessly. But I want to be able to run my solidity code and handle the contract through my own website instead of running it on the ethereum wallet application or somewhere else.

Anyone, please share some ideas on how we can achieve this, or maybe a summary/outline of the steps that we would need to take to achieve it. Any help would be great! Thanks!

Answer 1

You have many possibilities to achieve this. It depends what you really want to do.

1 - With testrpc : The easiest way to do this is to run testrpc on a server, for example a free aws-server or azure and expose the testrpc on internet. Then you can replace localhost:8545 by :8545 or using a dns to by-pass the ip.

2 - With a private Ethereum Blockchain : If you want a real private Ethereum Blockchain, you can build a private node on a aws/azure/google server and expose this node to internet. See this, to learn a bit more : https://blockgeeks.com/two-node-setup-of-a-private-ethereum/

3 - Use a ethereum public network You can send your smart contract to the public ethereum testnet and then use Metamask and web3js to connect your website to the ethereum testnet. More information for Metamask and how to deploy a contract with Metamask : https://karl.tech/learning-solidity-part-1-deploy-a-contract/ and here https://citywebconsultants.co.uk/blog/blockchain/introducing-ethereum-development-part-1-metamask-and-web3