Setting up a website

Sac Arrow

Sac Arrow

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Snorting his way across the USA
I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed right now. I know this is all researchable but I just need some basic questions answered. I have done this way back in the day. I just registered a domain name from Godaddy.

What I have dealt with before is having "space" provided by your ISP, and you can associate a domain with it, and upload .html files to the root location. I know that's all different now.

I don't -think- I have such a "space" available from my ISP (Xfinity/Comcast) but I don't really know. If I don't, what do I do?

I have seen recommendations for using Squarespace to create a website. Does Squarespace give a physical location to park the website, or do I still need to get one?
 
I use 123Ehost.com and still have HTMLs in a "Public" folder. You can create up to 1000 email accounts off your website, but their viewing software isn't that fun ... it setup for the old log in and download email type ... $75 a year
 
Google offers webhosting for free. I use it when teaching my classes...Have no idea how to associate with an existing domain, tho.
 
Today there's a million ways to setup a basic website. I use Amazon AWS and host a static site from an S3 bucket. Of course I'm in that industry for work..
The 'easiest' is to find, like the suggestions above, the most accessible point-click website provider(s) and use their services to set up a website.
It will depend on 'what's your mission' type of thought. What do you want the website to do. That will nudge towards one solution over the other.
I'm sure you've seen the Squarespace ads in certain pilots' youtube vids. Thats a solid platform, and I think maybe there's a free tier for simple basic sites? I could be wrong.
I used Shopify to build out a Storefront website for my Mom's cookie business. Also very easy, but for a specific purpose. They might also have a simple non-commerce website option that may be free.
Tons of ways to do this these days, so unfortunately for you I can't give a short simple answer...
 
Depends on what you want to do… Amazon Lightsail and a canned Wordpress image can have you up in an hour or two.

Letsencrypt gives you free SSL, Porkbun is a cheap domain registrar & DNS provider.
 
I've never used space from my ISP.

I have had an account at aspnix.com for probably 15 years you get a tremendous number of domains email addresses and drive space for something like $10 a month

Play your DNS records from GoDaddy to their and just start uploading files to the root.

Fastest part is installing the word press component and just installing pre fab functions that do what you want.
 
After some initial setup pain, self-hosting FlightsForBites.com on a raspberry pi from my house has been rather smooth. I haven't touched it in six months -- not even to reboot the pi.
 
is this for our “rhymes with ‘corn’” site?
 
eman1200 said:
is this for our “rhymes with ‘corn’” site?
Click to expand...
I think it has something to do w/ H&B. Yay! 1st time I've been able to work H&B into a thread. I feel like I really belong here now.
 
murphey said:
Google offers webhosting for free. I use it when teaching my classes...Have no idea how to associate with an existing domain, tho.
Click to expand...

I AM BEYOND CONFUSED!!!!!!!

I'm trying to set up Google hosting. I added Wordpress. I get this endless loop of deployments, etc.... and tons of garbage I have zero understanding of. I'm in um.... Google Cloud "Deployment Manager." I can't get anywhere from there.

Okay I've deleted the 'project' which should stop any billing that might be incurred. It's pretty clear the Google solution is not going to work for me. Back to square one.


Okay so I have.... 1. Domain name via Godaddy.

I need: 2. Web hosting service capable of integrating my domain name. (Right?)

3. Some sort of web creator/editor. (Right?)
 
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WE use hostgator for my daughter's dance studio. It includes the creation tools and hosting. Our domain records (your GoDaddy stuff) is on MS Office 365 because we already pay for that for the office tools. I pointed teh record at the static IP hostgator provided. Costs about $60 per year if I remember correctly (which I may not, it's been up for 3+ years now). Not the most flexible but it's been rock solid.
 
jsstevens said:
WE use hostgator for my daughter's dance studio. It includes the creation tools and hosting. Our domain records (your GoDaddy stuff) is on MS Office 365 because we already pay for that for the office tools. I pointed teh record at the static IP hostgator provided. Costs about $60 per year if I remember correctly (which I may not, it's been up for 3+ years now). Not the most flexible but it's been rock solid.
Click to expand...

I took a peek at that. It looks like it might be more in line with what I need, which is something that is idiot proof.
 
Sac Arrow said:
I have seen recommendations for using Squarespace to create a website. Does Squarespace give a physical location to park the website, or do I still need to get one?
Click to expand...

Squarespace is where I built my flying/camping/cooking site, https://richwellner.com and I'm very happy with it. They provide the physical location. So you just point your domain name where they tell you to and you're good to go.
 
Sac Arrow said:
...in line with what I need../QUOTE]
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What exactly do you need? I maintain my club's website. I could easily self-host very cheaply but the club needs to be prepared when I leave. We spend around 250/year for a solution a non-technical person can maintain.
 
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Sac Arrow said:
I AM BEYOND CONFUSED!!!!!!!

I'm trying to set up Google hosting. I added Wordpress. I get this endless loop of deployments, etc.... and tons of garbage I have zero understanding of. I'm in um.... Google Cloud "Deployment Manager." I can't get anywhere from there.

Okay I've deleted the 'project' which should stop any billing that might be incurred. It's pretty clear the Google solution is not going to work for me. Back to square one.


Okay so I have.... 1. Domain name via Godaddy.

I need: 2. Web hosting service capable of integrating my domain name. (Right?)

3. Some sort of web creator/editor. (Right?)
Click to expand...

WordPress.com
For $4 per month you get all you need, and you can use your GoDaddy domain name there
 
Mahneuvers said:
What exactly do you need? I maintain my club's website. I could easily self-host very cheaply but the club needs to be prepared when I leave. We spend around 250/year for a solution a non-technical person can maintain.
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Something to maintain a blog/blogs and online book samples.
 
After doing a little reading I agree that maybe Wordpress would be a really good solution, for a couple reasons:
* WP is a big name in this exact area, simple website building and management
* Because its so notorious, there's tons of community tutorials, helpful vids, free templates, etc etc.
* WP is integrated with GoDaddy easily, as shown in the vid I link below, it'll make your life easier and any future hand-off easier.
* dead simple
* Cheap/free almost


I've been doing things a more involved way, simply because that's what I do as a cloud based developer. For your needs I think WP could be a fantastic solution.
Just my two cents.
Watch that vid, I didn't watch the entire thing, but it looks like a bullseye for answering your questions almost exactly like you have explained you want to set things up so far.
 
Well I ended up going with Squarespace. It seems to have everything I need and is easy enough to edit. Wordpress was intimidating to me but I never got past the initial setup.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Well I ended up going with Squarespace. It seems to have everything I need and is easy enough to edit. Wordpress was intimidating to me but I never got past the initial setup.
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I felt the same way with WordPress but once I got in to it, it became really intuitive.
I have never used Squarespace but I am curious about it. Can we see the site when you get it setup?
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I felt the same way with WordPress but once I got in to it, it became really intuitive.
I have never used Squarespace but I am curious about it. Can we see the site when you get it setup?
Click to expand...

Sure. I'm still waiting for the DNS stuff to be effective, and it's going to take me a fair amount of time to get some pages set up and some content in there. It's basically, for lack of better description, a themed web page editor, and you can stick various blocks, such as text boxes and links on a gridded snap-to layout, complete with common headers and footers. For now all I have is a place holder with some text on it
 
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SixPapaCharlie said:
I felt the same way with WordPress but once I got in to it, it became really intuitive.
I have never used Squarespace but I am curious about it. Can we see the site when you get it setup?
Click to expand...

Well here we go. I still have yet to populate my site with stuff. It is live now, and I am trying to think of ways to integrate my short stories in to it. Probably just a page with another (or several chapter pages) of dialogue content. A tool that would emulate an ebook would be a plus.
 
Mahneuvers said:
Check this out.
Click to expand...

That's interesting. I might check it out. In any case I don't want to embed it as a PDF, and I don't want to embed it as an ebook file (e.g. MOBI or Epub) as that will require a third-party online reader. Since we're back to HTML, I'll probably just have a landing page for short story titles, linking to the text pages. I -think- they are short enough to be manageable in a single page, but if not I can break them up by scenes maybe. The bigger issue is formatting. I want to preserve my indents, and normally that is a little hard to do in HTML without some scripting.
 
Initially, the bigger issue seems to be a limitation of Squarespace where nesting of pages past one layer deep is not supported. I had intended to have my short story tab in the main menu point to a landing page, with menu links to the individual story pages (requiring two layers deep.) I think though that in reality, it isn't a limitation. What I'm currently playing with is a folder on the main menu, with subpages for the individual stories. This results in a drop-down menu on the main menu, where the reader can select the individual stories.

Check it out. Let me know what you think. There is still the formatting problem. It 'works' but it's not optimum. I lose my italics and indentation. I suppose I can manually replace the indentation. I've played with saving the Word file as an .html and an .rtf, but neither of those worked any differently.
 
colleagues is spell't wrong and is that pic supposed to be that blurry?

upload_2023-1-18_14-38-40.png
 
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