ok genuine question from someone who wants to make a website but has no experience in it other than a HTML class and doesn't want to resort to a cushy GUI based website maker, How do I make a website? I'm not talking about the HTML, I got that part down. I'm talking about how do I actually get a domain and host? I tried doing it and got like a $5 domain, but the host was like $30 for a year which was too much for me and couldn't figure out how to selfhost with my extremely limited knowledge. Is that just what it costs to have a website or is there an easier way?

[–] CorneliusTalmadge@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

It depends on how fancy of a website you are trying to make. But check out something like Hugo or Jekyll. I haven’t used Jekyll personally but have used Hugo. There are plenty of templates to get you started depending the type of content you are planning on putting up.

And the best part is you can host the site for free on GitHub or Gitlab, so the domain name is the only cost.

[–] thirteene@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

First off, it's important to understand Responsive Design and why you shouldn't be writing your own css these days as a newbie. Bootstrap is a public css doc with a lot of those problems pre-solved, so you might want to look up some of their tooling.

As far as a website: you'll need a domain name, you can get some for free, but they usually have short renewals otherwise this is unavoidable.

You can pay for "shared hosting" at any of the major vendors like blue host or GoDaddy and get apache or aspx file hosting for like you said $X0/year.

You can use an s3 static website for ~free. Creating a DNS hosted zone is $.50. but you can create an s3 bucket (think flash drive in the cloud) store a threshold of free documents, and publish them as a website all within the free tier of AWS. This has some technical background and AWS can get expensive of you make mistakes (although this shouldn't scale much unless you upload a thousands ton of files repeatedly)

Alternatively you can use GitHub pages . Git is a tool used by developers to share and edit code, they let you publish free HTML as well, but requires learning git or figuring out a tool with a UI like source tree. I don't think you can use custom domains with this though.

Although if you have any interest in tech, you can also create a free nginx docker container through a lot of services like ecs, but you can also self host in a "sandbox". Docker creates a mini virtual machine with all of the code required to run self contained. Nginx let's you create HTML docker containers by mounting a directory. ~ docker start nginx /website/directory And it just runs self contained.

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[–] finickydesert@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I was tempted to get a domain tie it to a docker image on azure then host a private (just me) Lemmy /(m)/kbin with a few other fediverse (like friendica) on it but I'm just too broke at the moment

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[–] iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 months ago

I'm in this picture and I don't like it.

[–] Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 months ago

my domain is my media server, so id rather not end my domain.

[–] demizerone@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

I gave up on factamatic.org, my note taking app many many years ago, basically what obsidian is now. I suffer from a lack of execution.

[–] thevoidzero@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Now think, patents are similar things but for with more money. And imagine if someone else had similar idea and made slightly similar website you go sue them coz you had the idea first.

[–] BreathingUnderWater@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 months ago

Truer words never spoken

[–] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 months ago

Just buy it for ten years. You're ultimately saving money and it'll give you more time to incubate your dream!

[–] dan1101@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Pay $12, can't let some other jerk have my dream.

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[–] houstoneulers@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

github allows a free website through their domain

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 3 points 2 months ago

On one hand I have my personal firstname-lastname-dot-com I'm still hosting for years. I'm not a webdev but WordPress is awfully bloated and everything else needs a touch of webdev skills.

So it's been at "coming soon I'm working on it welcome to sample example theme page" for years, but hey it's indexing well based on age alone!

The other is a fun clever one I route through cloudflare to access all my home server stuff via HTTPS over TailScale. Never have to expose any ports to the big scary world wide web. :p

[–] ResoluteCatnap@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago

i did recently go through and turn off auto renewal on a few. I still have several projects i never launched though that I'm holding out hope for... someday

[–] CodexArcanum@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I'm definitely getting my blog going regularly again... next year...

[–] Dalkor@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I should take some time and find another redirect for http://notreddit.com

[–] qevlarr@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

automatic renewal but now I'm questioning it...

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