I’d like to host my portfolio and projects on my own server, as I don’t expect them to be very high-traffic. But all the project statements begin with “Build a CodePen.io app…” Is that just for the convenience of people without other hosting options?
I personally have both, codepen.io project pages and some projects on my own server.
I don’t think that should be an issue… 
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I’d actually recommend everyone to develop locally and host them somewhere else (GitHub [and Heroku if doing back-end stuff] is usually the default choice). I think the extra effort that it takes to set up your development environment and learn the basics of GitHub is well worth it.
I think FCC recommends it because it’s a lot easier and quicker to get up-and-running. I’ve run into some issues with CodePen (e.g. - collapsed navbar doesn’t work on mobile when in CodePen, the fact that it’s a frame within a window sometimes causes issues, etc.) and eventually got frustrated enough with CodePen itself that I just started developing locally instead.
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If you are going for the Certifications the projects must be hosted so that they and the underlying code can be reviewed. Codepen works pretty well for that, at least for the Front-end projects. Editing is terrible though, so as @bethqiang said get yourself an IDE on your local machine, you’ll be much happier I’d expect. I don’t think you are restricted to Codepen, again as long as the project is viewable and the code can be reviewed.
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From the FCC FAQ:
Do I have to use CodePen for the front end projects?
As long as your code is publicly viewable, and you have a live demo, you can use whatever you want.
I’m not entirely sure what the phrase “your code is publicly viewable” amounts to, though. For the front-end projects, the code is publicly viewable via the “view source” command that every browser provides anyway.
If you want to host your project on GitHub Pages (free and easy to use), as @bethqiang recommended, you might want to include a link to the repository that holds the source code on the page itself for the convenience of the reviewer.
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Ah, that’s exactly what I was looking for. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Thanks!
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As one of the people who verify academic honesty at FCC. I will tell you I need to be able to see source code. Code pen makes the code super fast to see. Or host it in a gitgub repo and a private server. Personally, I like codepen because it is faster. But I still have to go to github for your backend stuff.
Some people I have even just done the view source and looked at the .js file but it saves my sanity to not do that. Don’t minify stuff and dump it is code pen either.
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