Hosting Bot(Microsoft Bot Framework) in public domain

Question

I have made a Bot using Microsoft Bot Framework and I want to host it in some other server than azure. I want to connect it to Microsoft BotFramework Webchat . So please help me to connect the the three things 1-Bot Code running on server 2-Microsoft BotFramework Webchat 3 dev.botframework.com : where my bot is registered

Answer 1

Yes it is possible to host your bot on any server other than azure. It is fairly simple if you are using the node.js sdk of microsoft bot framework. You deploy it like any normal node.js service. Here are the links to some of the services and documentation on how to deploy node.js applications on them.

Heroku - Free Tier | No credit card needed - https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/deploying-nodejs

AWS - Free Tier | Credit card needed - http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/create_deploy_nodejs.html

Digital Ocean - https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-node-js-application-for-production-on-ubuntu-16-04

However if you are using the C# SDK then you will have to host it on a server which has IIS. Instructions in the link below

Digital Ocean - https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/hosting-a-asp-net-website

AWS - http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/create_deploy_NET.quickstart.html

Once you deploy the next step would be to set up SSL for the server. Services like heroku offer a free SSL if you use their subdomain. Once you set up the server, you can connect it to the Microsoft Bot Framework Web Platform (dev.botframework.com) by using this url in the settings page of your bot.