11 ms·

Run Your Own Website

261 points by zacssite 7y ago

luckylion 7y ago
And when you do, please consider limiting the width of your content to 60-80 characters.
- mikkei 7y ago
  and 25 lines max so it fits on xterm :)
CM30 7y ago
Especially given the number of things platforms like YouTube, Reddit and Medium are cracking down on/demonetising. For instance, your own host likely won't boot you off or interfere if you post cybersecurity related videos/articles, like YouTube started to do a few days ago. Having your own site provides a backup in case the platforms you use to promote your work turn on/your industry. And don't worry about the extra traffic a platform may bring. That's why you publish on your own site first, then syndicate your content to other services later. https://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE
echelon 7y ago
> [...] Medium, for example, because the company owns all the content you publish there. Is this true? I am absolutely shocked if so. I would assume Medium might get a license to display your content, but do you actually transfer your ownership to them by posting? If so, that's dastardly wicked.
- didgeoridoo 7y ago
  My guess is the author meant “owns” in the informal sense of “can broadly do whatever they want with it,” not in the formal sense of “possesses an exclusive license to it.” You retain the license to content you post to Medium, while granting them specific non-exclusive usage rights. That said, if Medium represents the only copy of your work, it should be considered at-risk. They are not obligated to retain or make it available in perpetuity. I agree with the author that this is not a desirable situation, and that you should have full control over the source of truth for your intellectual property.
- chrismorgan 7y ago
  https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e0f https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e... says: > You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium. > By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive license to publish it on Medium Services, including anything reasonably related to publishing it (like storing, displaying, reformatting, and distributing it). In consideration for Medium granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Medium may enable advertising on the Services, including in connection with the display of your content or other information. We may also use your content to promote Medium, including its products and content. We will never sell your content to third parties without your explicit permission. In practice this lets them do literally anything they want with your content. I’m not sure what lawyers would make of the bit about not selling your content to third parties, but I cynically imagine that all it takes is for them to classify such an arrangement as one of their Services and they’re off the hook. Do note that they did not include the word “non-transferrable”, only “non-exclusive”.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    It looks pragmatic and reasonable to me. You give them the non exclusive license they need to publish it. You allow them to show ads. You allow them to use your content in ads. If they get bought, well their successor would have the same rights.
originalvichy 7y ago
The title made me hope for a quite literal way to run your website: using some kind of energy harvesting (bicycle?) used to power a small computer with a web server. This is an issue that is quite simple to solve. Many podcasters (espescially Joe Rogan) like to talk about being afraid of getting removed from a platform without having your own hosting set up. Most of the controversial big names of youtube and other platforms can and should stay as independent as possible. Twitter and others’ aim is to lure as many people as possible to their platforms. Once you are big enough you should probably seek out an independent way to distribute content.
- rickyvetter 7y ago
  Here's an example of a site that is doing something like this - https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html
- icebraining 7y ago
  If you just want to distribute content, you're better off sharing bittorrent links. The problem is that those podcasters want the visibility and the ad money of those platforms. Which is valid, but not something that is solvable by self-hosting at home.
  - PavlovsCat 7y ago
    We need to transition to solutions for it though, and a "hybrid" approach would be a move in the right direction. i.e. you don't have to leave the platforms, just make your own website, too. Yeah, it's more work, but nothing good will come of just leaving it to the big players and what they come up with. To even have leverage, people can't just be completely dependent, that's a non-starter.
    - kyshoc 7y ago
      IndieWeb calls this "Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere"[0]. [0]: https://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE
okaleniuk 7y ago
I do run my own site. Moreover, I do all the coding, styling, and layout manually and without any 3rd-party libraries or frameworks. Or even in-house libraries for that matter. This works for me in terms of freedom. I can do interactive plots, quizzes, games and all kind of programmable things I can imagine. No restrictions. In fact, I left Medium because I was restricted to text and images only. I want more. I want words and buttons: https://wordsandbuttons.online https://wordsandbuttons.online But it's not really aligned with the reasons from the post. It's not a resume. It would have been an awful resume. I wouldn't hire myself by this resume. And keeping record is, of course, nice. But it has nothing to do with running your own website. You can keep record on Medium, too. In fact, it would be more effective since it works wonders for the small notes. Still, I totally agree that keeping your own site is a fascinating experience and it's well worth time and effort.
- xorand 7y ago
  I enjoyed your https://wordsandbuttons.online/fortran_is_still_a_thing.html https://wordsandbuttons.online/fortran_is_still_a_thing.html
- llao 7y ago
  FYI your font-size is uncomfortably huge, I can see maybe 25 lines of text on my desktop screen. It feels like I should step backward a meter or two.
  - coldpie 7y ago
    Enormous fonts is a trend in modern web design for some reason. I browse most sites at about 66% zoom. Get used to the Ctrl+- shortcut.
    - bachmeier 7y ago
      It could have something to do with accessibility. My eyes aren't the best, so that font is about the smallest I can comfortably read.
    - IggleSniggle 7y ago
melling 7y ago
Any opinions on what are the best software choices for a single person to use in 2019 to build a website from scratch? I’d be willing to learn something new if I knew in 2 years, I’d be extremely productive.
- jordanmoconnor 7y ago
  Highly recommend Jekyll/GitHub pages for static sites. Many people recommend Jekyll/Hugo/Vue-press + Netlify as well.
- beigeoak 7y ago
  Github Pages is free and mirrors your git repository as a website.
  - gbuk2013 7y ago
    It’s nice but only supports static content, so personally I would not count that as “running my own website”. Web hosting even container based VPS is super cheap - I would just go for that and have the extra freedom to do interesting things.
    - dvtrn 7y ago
      only supports static content, so personally I would not count that as “running my own website”. Curious: why not? Before WordPress and MoveableType websites were largely static HTML, where do you personally draw the distinction?
      - gbuk2013 7y ago
        Simply because it is very limiting. Running your own site, even on cheap shared hosting, opens up lots of exciting possibilities. With a bit of PHP and SQLite you can build lots of cool stuff (just like before WordPress came and made everything boring). For simple sites, static is great, but if it becomes more complex (even just lots of pages sort of complex) then some sort of templating, even just through basic PHP includes, becomes very helpful to keep it maintainable. Example: I help look after a site with 3K static HTML pages and it is impossible to make any global changes without literally months of manual work. :( For my own site I use a static site generator, which is another great option, but that comes with a much steeper learning curve unfortunately.
madengr 7y ago
Sheesh, 20 years ago I had a static IP, along with my own server running web, mail, and DNS servers, in my apartment. Either things are more complicated these days, or I just got tired of running it. Probably the latter. Then again, doing something like putting a downloadable file on Wordpress is difficult. It was easy on my own server. At least I still have a static IP and my old domain name.
- cr0sh 7y ago
  While you can still do what you did, likely you wouldn't have a static IP - at least not here in the United States. Most home connections have a dynamic IP provided by DHCP; now, usually, that IP won't change (probably tied to the MAC address of the modem or router) - but it can change. So what most routers provide is a way to report the IP to a service like "Dynamic DNS" (https://dyn.com/dns/ https://dyn.com/dns/ - which used to be free, and this is first I've learned that it's now an Oracle project - sigh) - which can then be pointed to as the DNS service for the site - so if your address ever changes, name resolution will still be available. Other settings in your router can do various other functions to route the traffic to-and-from your server. Which is where it also gets tricky. Most providers "look the other way" when it comes to servers, provided they don't get popular. They also block more than a few ports, so you have to work around that as well (mainly standard ports like 80, 25, etc). But technically, most TOS contracts with broadband ISPs forbid the running of servers, and they can pull your connection if they want to for that TOS violation. The other option would be to sign up for "business class" service with an ISP. Sometimes you can get this with your current home ISP - for a massively inflated price (and usually a drop in speed if you want to keep the costs the same). But usually you are given one or more static IPs, and the ability to run servers is part of the deal. Not all home ISPs provide this service, but the big names (COX, Comcast, etc) I believe all do. Some, though, might throw in another "catch": You can't have business service to a residential address. This will vary based on your provider; most have realized the idea of SOHO setups and the need/want for business class service for these home-based systems. But not all have. So you have to keep that in mind, as well. Which is why, instead of going thru all of that hassle (and it really isn't a minor amount - on top of everything else you have to do to run a home-based server, plus security, etc) - most people will instead go with some other hosted solution, a cloud virtual server being the first choice for most today. Shared hosting is still available, of course, but last I checked, you can't get use a letsencrypt certificate with these, depending on how they have things set up (you can still purchase and set up your own certificate - but that's more money out the door). Colocation is still an option - but it tends to be (always has been) an expensive proposition for most, unless you're planning on using it for a small amount of shared hosting (friends and family?), or you run a business providing such hosting as part of a package (I worked for an employer who did this for his clients as part of the custom websites we built - but if they wanted to host it themselves or with another provider, that was an option). Or it might be that for certain needs it would be cheaper to build the server yourself and colo it, than trying to use virtual or cloud hosting for a similar system (or you want more control over the system - the ability to visit the data center to upgrade or fix issues can be useful). So there are plenty of options out there for someone who want to run their own piece of the internet. Ultimately, though, aside from cloud virtual hosting services, they all require a fair amount of technical competence that keeps most away, and even those who have the knowledge sometimes don't want the administrative and maintenance headaches that come with the territory. That can be true to an extent even with shared hosting. For instance, I personally have an old shared hosting account with Hurricane Electric; I was running a website using PHP and MySQL, and about a year ago (or maybe it's been longer?) they upgraded their servers to a new version of PHP that ended up breaking my website something horrible (my website was originally a way for me to learn PHP years ago, and it never got the love it needed ultimately). I put up a quick "site broken - sorry" page and left it. But the truth is, I don't want to have to maintain even that; worrying about issues with PHP and MySQL, dealing with thoughts of potential attacks, making sure my stuff is secure, etc. For my site, for what I used it for, all that is a hassle. Which is why I have been thinking (but have yet to execute) about going back to a simple static site. If I need comments or discussion (which I don't know if that is necessary), then I can rig up something with an outside provider - but ultimately, my pages should just be simple static HTML and some javascript. Some basic CSS to make things a little responsive, and nothing else much. I've been giving thought to doing this on a DO droplet; it'd be much cheaper than my HE hosting, and give me a bit more freedom (plus I can use an LE certificate). I think all of this is what holds people back, and makes them seek other simpler paths; they just want to get something up and shown to the world, they don't want to deal with all the technical issues, they don't want to have to worry about security, and they don't want to have to deal with other complexities. This is why sites like Medium, and other providers (QIX, etc) have been so successful; they have removed such strain from the equation. Of course, it has come with more than a few visible, and at times hidden, costs, that content creators (and users) are beginning to experience, and more importantly, understand what they have given up. We're probably in the process - or right on the edge - of yet another shift in "content hosting" for lack of a better term. Between the censoring on platforms, and other reasons, there is some shuffling going on it seems. What I honestly hope comes out of this is a move to distributed content (so-called "distributed web", for instance) - but I don't think things are quite there for people to really use it (though some distributed platforms I have seen really seem to be right on the cusp for adoption - if they can just market it right).
marktangotango 7y ago
What I’d like to see is a geocities but with: database, server side scripting, caching, memcache, and https free for limited use with a performance and availability guarantee. What would it take to get this on a massive scale?
- oiasdjfoiasd 7y ago
  You mean Google Cloud and AWS? If you're looking for a WYSIWYG website editor, you probably don't need caching/memcache, etc.
- cosmojg 7y ago
  Where would the funding come from?
  - cannonedhamster 7y ago
    Cloudfunding? It's like Kickstarter but for projects that are nearly guaranteed to die. Kind of like how patrons supported art. Most of the stuff was just workday or average, but every more and then there were gems.
- roywiggins 7y ago
  Heroku? https://www.heroku.com/free https://www.heroku.com/free
- Terretta 7y ago
  Y Combinator’s own Garry Tan tried it with posterious and is so far succeeding with posthaven: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Tan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Tan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous https://posthaven.com https://posthaven.com Our pledge to you: We'll never get acquired. We'll never shut down. You pay. We keep the lights on. What would it be like to make a service that lasts for 10 years? 100 years? That’s what we’re trying to build at Posthaven. We’re as sick as you are to have to switch services every few years, or worry about running your own servers and getting hacked all the time. To do that, it’ll take a small team of engineers who quietly maintain the software like a constant gardener, quietly doing the right things over time. That’s us. Simple, easy blogs for $5 a month, forever.
Invictus0 7y ago
This type of post makes it to the front page pretty frequently, but I think the audience on hacker News vastly underestimates the difficulty of setting up a personal site for the general public. There is always the refrain of "but just use static HTML!", as if anyone even knows what that is, as if it's so easy to set up a domain and hosting, as if no one even wants a nicely designed site with images and JavaScript that's easy to maintain. Even as a technologically literate person, I find the hassle of maintaining my own static personal website far more onerous than it has to be. Platforms are not great, but they are the only way that most people will ever interact with the web.
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  So for most people that are in the situation you describe I'd say they would probably just spin up a WordPress instance, pick a theme they like, and start posting. A static html site? Even easier. There are tons of services out there that will let you host your own content for very little money or even free. You can set up a static site on a platform like 1mb.com for next to nothing and edit the html, css, etc. To your hearts content. JavaScript mostly runs in the browser unless you're doing something more complicated than hosting your blog. I taught myself HTML by reading source code when I was around 12 (I'm not a coder by trade). It's not a super complicated language. Nor is CSS. And there's sites like CSS Zen Garden, w3schools, and template sites all over the internet that ease that transition. You talk about that general public, but this is a site mostly of techies, so it's natural that topics like this would be present here, far more natural than politics or posts on gossip at least. For the general public it's still pretty easy with numerous site builders, hosted solutions, etc. that will do all the heavy lifting for you. If you're not willing to take the time to learn, there's always someone who will charge you for their experience and make sure you're set up well enough to do what you need to. It can't be that hard to do with the proliferation of crackpots, marketers, and homemakers who are able to set up their own sites effectively. While I can certainly sympathize and empathize with the idea that as a community we sometimes don't realize the difficulty in some things, on this particular topic, I think that between the market and open solutions there's a wide array of options available for someone to host their own blog with a number of entry ramps of differing difficulty.
dwheeler 7y ago
At least own your domain name and be able to easily move your website content to whereever you want. I think for most people it's cheaper and more convenient to use a hosting service, and that's fine... as long as you can change hosting services. I've had my personal site ( https://dwheeler.com https://dwheeler.com ) since 1999. As noted in https://dwheeler.com/aboutsite.html https://dwheeler.com/aboutsite.html my site has been hosted on 4 different systems, and I'm sure that I will move again at some point. Users won't notice - or care - because I can easily move to some other service.
- drdeadringer 7y ago
  > At least own your domain name I agree and I have a story to add to this. Despite there being a couple ways to spell my first name and literally dozens of ways to spell my last name, I share the same name as a rock star of similar age as myself down to the letter. While I do understand I didn't necessarily need a ".com" TLD URL and that I had other TLD options, it was the first availability I checked for obvious reasons; this is how I discovered my semi-famed name-double. I eventually went with a ".net" TLD URL of my name and it's turned out alright so far -- and it makes perfect sense to me that my alternate actually should have the ".com" version instead of myself. I'm content, likely even happy, with how things turned out. Enter SEO stage left.
  - 0xfeba 7y ago
    You're lucky the Rock Star doesn't go all Nissan.com on you (which appears to be NLA).
- lancesells 7y ago
  Yes. I've had run my own site since 2000 ( https://www.lancesells.com https://www.lancesells.com ) moving it around multiple times. The only thing I've really changed is moving to a static site so there's one less thing to export or import(database). Having my own website I've worked on keeping it speedy and not reliant on any javascript.
- a1369209993 7y ago
  > At least own your domain name Serious question: How? Aside from .onion[0], all TLDs I know of only allow you to rent a domain name, and will take it away if you don't keep paying their protection racket year-on-year. I would be happy to pay >1000$ to purchase a (human-readable, second-level, etc) domain, if I could actually find where to do so. 0: which is less "own" and more "conjure out of the platonic ether something that no one else is capable of using".
superkuh 7y ago
Yup. People tend to assume running your own site is difficult but running a static webserver is dead simple. As long as you don't involve all the unneeded dynamic language and database it's secure and doesn't really need updating all the time either. 90% of people can run a static web server on their home connection and it would fulfill their every requirement (as well as solving almost all 'problems' that exist on the web). Home connections of a couple megabits are certainly fast enough for a personal site.
- coldpie 7y ago
  Mm, nah. Running a DNS server, choosing an HTTP server and keeping all the related software up to date is a lot to ask even of a techie. And that's not even getting into dynamic IP issues.
  - superkuh 7y ago
    Why do you need to run a DNS server? My IP only changes once every few years with Comcast. I use one of the many free DNS services available online (been w/zoneedit for almost 2 decades) and set it manually when it does change. But they also support dyndns that most home routers have options to use for updates. Most webservers are very secure when they're not running php and mysql too. They have far less of a security problem than a browser executing arbitrary javascript and require updating only once a year or two, if at all.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    You don't need to run a DNS server, just some utility that updates the record when your IP changes. There are many, and are quite simple to use (basic text config, or simple GUI). As for maintaining stuff updated, unattended-upgrades on a Debian or Ubuntu LTS system will keep your system patched for five years, and it's very rare that the infrastructure stuff breaks.
    - slx26 7y ago
      maybe that's the difficult part, finding the uncommon path among all the current trends, clearly distant from these "simple" proposals. it might be easy to set up if you understand how the web works, but that understanding generally comes from some real work/experience we already have, which might not be so easy to pick up. having 1000 simple ways to run a website could be much more complicated than having 2 tricky ways to run a website. specially if you don't know whether any of those ways are simple or not.
ibudiallo 7y ago
For my personal websites, I only ever tried wordpress around 10 years ago before I built my own from scratch. https://idiallo.com https://idiallo.com What I find interesting is that a swat of new developers thinks that the only options are: 1. free hosting with lock-in platforms (medium, blogger, ...) 2. Clever hacks (github, netlify, cloudflare...) 3. Expensive hosting ($40/m+) The alternative is to use shared hosting for simple content. Or cheap but excellent services like linode, digitalocean, or vultr. They set you back $5/m or less. Host your own content, make local backups. If your provider complains, find another host, copy and paste your content and update the dns.
- derefr 7y ago
  I use the “clever hacks” because I’m afraid of one of my blog articles getting linked to on Reddit. Even if there are no ads on my site, I want it to stay up and readable, and I don’t want to suddenly get an egress-bandwidth bill in the process! Also, despite having done ops for years, I don’t want my continued willingness to do ops (as with DO/Linode/Vultr) or my continued usage of my small municipal ISP (or even my small municipal ISP’s continued existence, as these often get bought up, and their branding—including web-host domains!—gets blown away in the process) to determine whether my site stays up. I want my website to continue to exist, at the same URL, even if I retire and go live in the mountains with no Internet for the rest of my life. I want my works to outlive me! There are “good” shared HTML hosts that have been around for decades and will likely be around for decades more—SDF.org is one; most universities with accounts for alumni are another—but these don’t tend to be able to handle the bandwidth, so you have to combine them with a service like Cloudflare anyway. But really, “slug-based static-site build-product hosting” like Github Pages and Netlify are just shared HTML hosts as well—with some extra features, sure, but ones that you can ignore if you please. With GH Pages, for example, you don’t have to use a static-site generator if you don’t want to; you can just commit content assets directly to your github-pages branch. And the result has the same properties you list: if Github complains, I can take that same repo and push it to another site; or it can gracefully degrade to being a folder (that happens to have a .git dir in it) that I can plop into any public_html directory.
  - 7y ago
the_arun 7y ago
Anyone has interesting themes for Jekyll/Hugo? I liked the layout in this blog - https://www.jotaen.net/ https://www.jotaen.net/ However, it is a custom template.
splitbrain 7y ago
"your website as a record" resonates with me. I recently redesigned my website (which is online since 2001) and one new feature I added is a random button. Clicking it will open a random page which is often a blog post I wrote many years ago. It's easily the most fun feature for me personally as it makes me remember things of my life... I don't know how much other visitors use or like it. If you want, give it a try at https://www.splitbrain.org https://www.splitbrain.org - it's the dice in the menu.
- Theodores 7y ago
  A very nice website. It is rare to have websites of such character these days. Potentially everyone should be able to have a website that offers up some of their personality, yours has that, anyone can tell some effort has gone into it. The only thing though is that in the contact details there is the 'I get so many emails that I will probably ignore yours' message. This I don't think is necessary. It sends out the wrong message. You could have a template or two to handle enquiries that you don't have time to reply to so you don't discourage that one person who does want to reach out to you but does value your time more than their own. Those that don't care about your time will ignore your 'don't bother emailing me coz I am too busy' message anyway. It is crazy how we have all of these methods of communication but we have all put up barriers. There was a time when everyone had their name, phone number and address in the phone book. We used to actually use the phone in those days too.
cardingggg 7y ago
I totally agree with this. While running and maintaining your own website isn't trivial enough yet that _anybody_ can just up and do it, it's definitely something most anyone willing to spend a weekend can pick up and learn, with maybe a bit of help. Been considering moving towards a static site generator setup myself, and is currently looking at Gatsby. I'm curious though --- barring preference for language, which generator would you recommend? I keep hearing about Jekyll, Hugo, Gatsby, etc. but haven't really come across any objective comparisons between options.
- zacssite 7y ago
  It comes down to how much time and effort you want to invest into learning a new system, which should depend on how many of the advanced features those systems enable that you will use. For me, that answer was as little as possible and zero. I just need a good static site generator. There are a bunch to choose from these days, but fewer back when I was faced with this decision in the early 2000s, so I wrote my own. If you don't need anything flashy, use something like my engine (First Crack: https://zacs.site/projects.html#firstCrack https://zacs.site/projects.html#firstCrack) to build the site and GitHub Pages to serve it. If there's a certain feature you want that a combo like that does not allow for, find the simplest engine that meets your needs, learn to use it, then go from there. Most of the big names are pretty good these days, so you can't really go wrong no matter which you choose.
- llukas 7y ago
  Just use one with biggest following ie. Jekyll - you'll get tons of tutorials/themes/extensions. Using standard representation of posts (ie. Jekyll uses markdown - which integrates nicely with R markdown/bookdown) is a plus.
saagarjha 7y ago
> Under my definition, you must have 1) total control over your content, and 2) the ability to make it public or private at any time. I run my own website (https://saagarjha.com https://saagarjha.com, naturally) but I can't guarantee either of these. My host (GitHub Pages) can take down my content at any time if I annoy them enough, and once I make something public I don't suffer from the misconception that I can make it private again. I can, however, rehost my content (crucially, at the same "location"), which I think is nearly good enough.
meerita 7y ago
I run my website too (see profile). I use only Jekyll to compile it locally. I did my own CSS framework https://github.com/meerita/utilcss https://github.com/meerita/utilcss. I host it on a DO instance. I deploy it from a local terminal command.
OrgNet 7y ago
I do and pay about $10/year for my VPS... so about $20 per year with domain name (domain names are overpriced)... I'm thinking about going to IP only... that way it would not crap out when google's DNS goes down...
verisimilitudes 7y ago
I can see why this article with a very basic premise is so popular. * It's short, so the average reader here has enough attention span for it. * It's obvious, so that leaves plenty of room for patting oneself on the back. * It's simple, so one can reference their own writings about a similar topic or related to it in some way. * It's about a topic that lets the commenter here show off their own website and bloviate about themselves. This is nothing against the author, but against Hacker News and how so much interesting material fails to ever reach the front page.
- sequoia 7y ago
  Agreed: I struggle to understand why this is considered a useful post to a broad audience of people who all already know what a static site generator is. I will offer one critique of the article itself: the repeated (often many times within one sentence) self referential linking is tedious and makes reading difficult. Am I supposed to read 4 different articles before I get to the end of one sentence in this one, or is this just some SEO voodoo?
- davesmith1983 7y ago
  This post reads of "Why are people liking what I don't like?". This article might be stating the obvious to you. However sometimes people have to be reminded that things can be done simply without the nonsense of cloud hosting, CDNs, automated deployments and all the guff that comes with it. This sort of article is pertinent in the days of many of the large tech sites being censorious (there was a discussion with 100s of comments about youtube censoring infosec channels), sites with megabytes of JavaScript and even many CSS libraries / frameworks requiring a build tools for styling. Reminding people that it doesn't have to be this way is important and it doesn't need your approval.
- buboard 7y ago
  * it s timely, because a lot of things are censored lately * it’s something that a lot of people agree on, but it is NOT happening, so it s not obvious
logfromblammo 7y ago
> "<body style="...;display:none;" ...>" Please don't do this. If your website is your resume, and you intentionally obscure it from me, I'm not going to hire you.
buboard 7y ago
Every creator who relies on internet for income should have their website separately, there is no excuse, its cheap to get lots of storage , and most hosting providers are not hellishly censorious like social media. What we need is a wordpress-like system that allows uploading and tagging everything in a consisten format with itemproperties. Then, e.g. youtube could autoimport a videos from the feed when asked to. I dont know if such a system exist, but it seems pretty obvious that everyone who sells their content through social media should have an online fallback/backup.
mmphosis 7y ago
$12 + tax a year for each domain name. If you know a way around this, let me know. Using a single dynamic IP address, if the IP address changes I manually point the domain names to the new IP address. It's a bit of a pain, but the IP address really doesn't change that often. I could automate this with a great amount of time and trouble. I wish the Domain Registrar didn't have such a crazy panel for configuring such things. The ISP gave me a simpler version of their modem for what they call "bridge mode" that doesn't block ports. I'm paying for Internet Service, if they block ports they are not providing that service. The notion of a server is lost on me, there are packets being sent and received over the internet, if they block that they are not providing Internet Service. Port 80 on the home router forwards to a Raspberry Pi. My outages are when the power goes out, the IP address changes, or the ISP goes down. A Raspberry Pi 2 Model B / raspbian runs Apache, I've considered trying others like nginx. I don't need https and auto-renewing SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt, if you want to read something everyone can read it. If someone happens to modify the packets in the middle somewhere out there, so be it. I don't want you to login, and I definitely don't want your information -- if you have something interesting maybe I'll find it out there wherever and on whatever that might be...
- megous 7y ago
  For my home IP I use cname to a dynamic dns service provided by my router manufacturer. There are free dyndns services, that integrate with many home router brands. Then you don't need to automate the main domain A/AAAA record changes, which can be cumbersome, depending on the provider.
avaika 7y ago
Don't forget one small nuance: own website requires much (MUCH) more time for initial setup, than any other solution as service which is suggested instead. Especially if it's not a simple static site. And probably for maintenance as well (but it's debatable). Even for tech guys (especially those, who's not in webdev).
Spearchucker 7y ago
I've been running this since 1995 - https://www.wittenburg.co.uk https://www.wittenburg.co.uk. Most of the stuff on it isn't public (lists, home photos, documents) and I can't imagine not having it. It's super lightweight and yes, I still use HTML tables. Because they're easier to understand 5 years later than div tags.
provlem 7y ago
There are various platform like - usercv.com, about.me who provides personal resume website without coding. github.io is already there who provides such thing if someone knows coding.
AlchemistCamp 7y ago
I think this is great advice and I tend to agree with it. However, TechLead has recently given me pause. He spun up his YouTube channel and then quickly monetized it by dropping Paypal links into the video descriptions. He later made a video talking about doing this and how he thought it was a waste for people wanting to sell dresses, for example, to build a site with a cart and checkout, etc, instead of just selling right where their audience already was. At the size his channel is now, I think it's a bit crazy of him not to have a site, but he's had larger success as an entrepreneur than I have thus far...
aiyodev 7y ago
This seems like a good place to ask. Are there any free and reliable services to notify you when your website/web service is unavailable?

261 points by zacssite 7y ago

luckylion 7y ago

And when you do, please consider limiting the width of your content to 60-80 characters.

mikkei 7y ago
and 25 lines max so it fits on xterm :)

CM30 7y ago

Especially given the number of things platforms like YouTube, Reddit and Medium are cracking down on/demonetising. For instance, your own host likely won't boot you off or interfere if you post cybersecurity related videos/articles, like YouTube started to do a few days ago. Having your own site provides a backup in case the platforms you use to promote your work turn on/your industry. And don't worry about the extra traffic a platform may bring. That's why you publish on your own site first, then syndicate your content to other services later. https://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE

echelon 7y ago

> [...] Medium, for example, because the company owns all the content you publish there. Is this true? I am absolutely shocked if so. I would assume Medium might get a license to display your content, but do you actually transfer your ownership to them by posting? If so, that's dastardly wicked.

didgeoridoo 7y ago
My guess is the author meant “owns” in the informal sense of “can broadly do whatever they want with it,” not in the formal sense of “possesses an exclusive license to it.” You retain the license to content you post to Medium, while granting them specific non-exclusive usage rights. That said, if Medium represents the only copy of your work, it should be considered at-risk. They are not obligated to retain or make it available in perpetuity. I agree with the author that this is not a desirable situation, and that you should have full control over the source of truth for your intellectual property.
chrismorgan 7y ago
https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e0f https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e... says: > You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium. > By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive license to publish it on Medium Services, including anything reasonably related to publishing it (like storing, displaying, reformatting, and distributing it). In consideration for Medium granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Medium may enable advertising on the Services, including in connection with the display of your content or other information. We may also use your content to promote Medium, including its products and content. We will never sell your content to third parties without your explicit permission. In practice this lets them do literally anything they want with your content. I’m not sure what lawyers would make of the bit about not selling your content to third parties, but I cynically imagine that all it takes is for them to classify such an arrangement as one of their Services and they’re off the hook. Do note that they did not include the word “non-transferrable”, only “non-exclusive”.
- Angostura 7y ago
  It looks pragmatic and reasonable to me. You give them the non exclusive license they need to publish it. You allow them to show ads. You allow them to use your content in ads. If they get bought, well their successor would have the same rights.

originalvichy 7y ago

The title made me hope for a quite literal way to run your website: using some kind of energy harvesting (bicycle?) used to power a small computer with a web server. This is an issue that is quite simple to solve. Many podcasters (espescially Joe Rogan) like to talk about being afraid of getting removed from a platform without having your own hosting set up. Most of the controversial big names of youtube and other platforms can and should stay as independent as possible. Twitter and others’ aim is to lure as many people as possible to their platforms. Once you are big enough you should probably seek out an independent way to distribute content.

rickyvetter 7y ago
Here's an example of a site that is doing something like this - https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html
icebraining 7y ago
If you just want to distribute content, you're better off sharing bittorrent links. The problem is that those podcasters want the visibility and the ad money of those platforms. Which is valid, but not something that is solvable by self-hosting at home.
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  We need to transition to solutions for it though, and a "hybrid" approach would be a move in the right direction. i.e. you don't have to leave the platforms, just make your own website, too. Yeah, it's more work, but nothing good will come of just leaving it to the big players and what they come up with. To even have leverage, people can't just be completely dependent, that's a non-starter.
  - kyshoc 7y ago
    IndieWeb calls this "Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere"[0]. [0]: https://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE

okaleniuk 7y ago

I do run my own site. Moreover, I do all the coding, styling, and layout manually and without any 3rd-party libraries or frameworks. Or even in-house libraries for that matter. This works for me in terms of freedom. I can do interactive plots, quizzes, games and all kind of programmable things I can imagine. No restrictions. In fact, I left Medium because I was restricted to text and images only. I want more. I want words and buttons: https://wordsandbuttons.online https://wordsandbuttons.online But it's not really aligned with the reasons from the post. It's not a resume. It would have been an awful resume. I wouldn't hire myself by this resume. And keeping record is, of course, nice. But it has nothing to do with running your own website. You can keep record on Medium, too. In fact, it would be more effective since it works wonders for the small notes. Still, I totally agree that keeping your own site is a fascinating experience and it's well worth time and effort.

xorand 7y ago
I enjoyed your https://wordsandbuttons.online/fortran_is_still_a_thing.html https://wordsandbuttons.online/fortran_is_still_a_thing.html
llao 7y ago
FYI your font-size is uncomfortably huge, I can see maybe 25 lines of text on my desktop screen. It feels like I should step backward a meter or two.
- coldpie 7y ago
  Enormous fonts is a trend in modern web design for some reason. I browse most sites at about 66% zoom. Get used to the Ctrl+- shortcut.
  - bachmeier 7y ago
    It could have something to do with accessibility. My eyes aren't the best, so that font is about the smallest I can comfortably read.
  - IggleSniggle 7y ago

melling 7y ago

Any opinions on what are the best software choices for a single person to use in 2019 to build a website from scratch? I’d be willing to learn something new if I knew in 2 years, I’d be extremely productive.

jordanmoconnor 7y ago
Highly recommend Jekyll/GitHub pages for static sites. Many people recommend Jekyll/Hugo/Vue-press + Netlify as well.
beigeoak 7y ago
Github Pages is free and mirrors your git repository as a website.
- gbuk2013 7y ago
  It’s nice but only supports static content, so personally I would not count that as “running my own website”. Web hosting even container based VPS is super cheap - I would just go for that and have the extra freedom to do interesting things.
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    only supports static content, so personally I would not count that as “running my own website”. Curious: why not? Before WordPress and MoveableType websites were largely static HTML, where do you personally draw the distinction?
    - gbuk2013 7y ago
      Simply because it is very limiting. Running your own site, even on cheap shared hosting, opens up lots of exciting possibilities. With a bit of PHP and SQLite you can build lots of cool stuff (just like before WordPress came and made everything boring). For simple sites, static is great, but if it becomes more complex (even just lots of pages sort of complex) then some sort of templating, even just through basic PHP includes, becomes very helpful to keep it maintainable. Example: I help look after a site with 3K static HTML pages and it is impossible to make any global changes without literally months of manual work. :( For my own site I use a static site generator, which is another great option, but that comes with a much steeper learning curve unfortunately.

madengr 7y ago

Sheesh, 20 years ago I had a static IP, along with my own server running web, mail, and DNS servers, in my apartment. Either things are more complicated these days, or I just got tired of running it. Probably the latter. Then again, doing something like putting a downloadable file on Wordpress is difficult. It was easy on my own server. At least I still have a static IP and my old domain name.

cr0sh 7y ago
While you can still do what you did, likely you wouldn't have a static IP - at least not here in the United States. Most home connections have a dynamic IP provided by DHCP; now, usually, that IP won't change (probably tied to the MAC address of the modem or router) - but it can change. So what most routers provide is a way to report the IP to a service like "Dynamic DNS" (https://dyn.com/dns/ https://dyn.com/dns/ - which used to be free, and this is first I've learned that it's now an Oracle project - sigh) - which can then be pointed to as the DNS service for the site - so if your address ever changes, name resolution will still be available. Other settings in your router can do various other functions to route the traffic to-and-from your server. Which is where it also gets tricky. Most providers "look the other way" when it comes to servers, provided they don't get popular. They also block more than a few ports, so you have to work around that as well (mainly standard ports like 80, 25, etc). But technically, most TOS contracts with broadband ISPs forbid the running of servers, and they can pull your connection if they want to for that TOS violation. The other option would be to sign up for "business class" service with an ISP. Sometimes you can get this with your current home ISP - for a massively inflated price (and usually a drop in speed if you want to keep the costs the same). But usually you are given one or more static IPs, and the ability to run servers is part of the deal. Not all home ISPs provide this service, but the big names (COX, Comcast, etc) I believe all do. Some, though, might throw in another "catch": You can't have business service to a residential address. This will vary based on your provider; most have realized the idea of SOHO setups and the need/want for business class service for these home-based systems. But not all have. So you have to keep that in mind, as well. Which is why, instead of going thru all of that hassle (and it really isn't a minor amount - on top of everything else you have to do to run a home-based server, plus security, etc) - most people will instead go with some other hosted solution, a cloud virtual server being the first choice for most today. Shared hosting is still available, of course, but last I checked, you can't get use a letsencrypt certificate with these, depending on how they have things set up (you can still purchase and set up your own certificate - but that's more money out the door). Colocation is still an option - but it tends to be (always has been) an expensive proposition for most, unless you're planning on using it for a small amount of shared hosting (friends and family?), or you run a business providing such hosting as part of a package (I worked for an employer who did this for his clients as part of the custom websites we built - but if they wanted to host it themselves or with another provider, that was an option). Or it might be that for certain needs it would be cheaper to build the server yourself and colo it, than trying to use virtual or cloud hosting for a similar system (or you want more control over the system - the ability to visit the data center to upgrade or fix issues can be useful). So there are plenty of options out there for someone who want to run their own piece of the internet. Ultimately, though, aside from cloud virtual hosting services, they all require a fair amount of technical competence that keeps most away, and even those who have the knowledge sometimes don't want the administrative and maintenance headaches that come with the territory. That can be true to an extent even with shared hosting. For instance, I personally have an old shared hosting account with Hurricane Electric; I was running a website using PHP and MySQL, and about a year ago (or maybe it's been longer?) they upgraded their servers to a new version of PHP that ended up breaking my website something horrible (my website was originally a way for me to learn PHP years ago, and it never got the love it needed ultimately). I put up a quick "site broken - sorry" page and left it. But the truth is, I don't want to have to maintain even that; worrying about issues with PHP and MySQL, dealing with thoughts of potential attacks, making sure my stuff is secure, etc. For my site, for what I used it for, all that is a hassle. Which is why I have been thinking (but have yet to execute) about going back to a simple static site. If I need comments or discussion (which I don't know if that is necessary), then I can rig up something with an outside provider - but ultimately, my pages should just be simple static HTML and some javascript. Some basic CSS to make things a little responsive, and nothing else much. I've been giving thought to doing this on a DO droplet; it'd be much cheaper than my HE hosting, and give me a bit more freedom (plus I can use an LE certificate). I think all of this is what holds people back, and makes them seek other simpler paths; they just want to get something up and shown to the world, they don't want to deal with all the technical issues, they don't want to have to worry about security, and they don't want to have to deal with other complexities. This is why sites like Medium, and other providers (QIX, etc) have been so successful; they have removed such strain from the equation. Of course, it has come with more than a few visible, and at times hidden, costs, that content creators (and users) are beginning to experience, and more importantly, understand what they have given up. We're probably in the process - or right on the edge - of yet another shift in "content hosting" for lack of a better term. Between the censoring on platforms, and other reasons, there is some shuffling going on it seems. What I honestly hope comes out of this is a move to distributed content (so-called "distributed web", for instance) - but I don't think things are quite there for people to really use it (though some distributed platforms I have seen really seem to be right on the cusp for adoption - if they can just market it right).

marktangotango 7y ago

What I’d like to see is a geocities but with: database, server side scripting, caching, memcache, and https free for limited use with a performance and availability guarantee. What would it take to get this on a massive scale?

oiasdjfoiasd 7y ago
You mean Google Cloud and AWS? If you're looking for a WYSIWYG website editor, you probably don't need caching/memcache, etc.
cosmojg 7y ago
Where would the funding come from?
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  Cloudfunding? It's like Kickstarter but for projects that are nearly guaranteed to die. Kind of like how patrons supported art. Most of the stuff was just workday or average, but every more and then there were gems.
roywiggins 7y ago
Heroku? https://www.heroku.com/free https://www.heroku.com/free
Terretta 7y ago
Y Combinator’s own Garry Tan tried it with posterious and is so far succeeding with posthaven: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Tan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Tan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous https://posthaven.com https://posthaven.com Our pledge to you: We'll never get acquired. We'll never shut down. You pay. We keep the lights on. What would it be like to make a service that lasts for 10 years? 100 years? That’s what we’re trying to build at Posthaven. We’re as sick as you are to have to switch services every few years, or worry about running your own servers and getting hacked all the time. To do that, it’ll take a small team of engineers who quietly maintain the software like a constant gardener, quietly doing the right things over time. That’s us. Simple, easy blogs for $5 a month, forever.

Invictus0 7y ago

This type of post makes it to the front page pretty frequently, but I think the audience on hacker News vastly underestimates the difficulty of setting up a personal site for the general public. There is always the refrain of "but just use static HTML!", as if anyone even knows what that is, as if it's so easy to set up a domain and hosting, as if no one even wants a nicely designed site with images and JavaScript that's easy to maintain. Even as a technologically literate person, I find the hassle of maintaining my own static personal website far more onerous than it has to be. Platforms are not great, but they are the only way that most people will ever interact with the web.

cannonedhamster 7y ago
So for most people that are in the situation you describe I'd say they would probably just spin up a WordPress instance, pick a theme they like, and start posting. A static html site? Even easier. There are tons of services out there that will let you host your own content for very little money or even free. You can set up a static site on a platform like 1mb.com for next to nothing and edit the html, css, etc. To your hearts content. JavaScript mostly runs in the browser unless you're doing something more complicated than hosting your blog. I taught myself HTML by reading source code when I was around 12 (I'm not a coder by trade). It's not a super complicated language. Nor is CSS. And there's sites like CSS Zen Garden, w3schools, and template sites all over the internet that ease that transition. You talk about that general public, but this is a site mostly of techies, so it's natural that topics like this would be present here, far more natural than politics or posts on gossip at least. For the general public it's still pretty easy with numerous site builders, hosted solutions, etc. that will do all the heavy lifting for you. If you're not willing to take the time to learn, there's always someone who will charge you for their experience and make sure you're set up well enough to do what you need to. It can't be that hard to do with the proliferation of crackpots, marketers, and homemakers who are able to set up their own sites effectively. While I can certainly sympathize and empathize with the idea that as a community we sometimes don't realize the difficulty in some things, on this particular topic, I think that between the market and open solutions there's a wide array of options available for someone to host their own blog with a number of entry ramps of differing difficulty.

dwheeler 7y ago

At least own your domain name and be able to easily move your website content to whereever you want. I think for most people it's cheaper and more convenient to use a hosting service, and that's fine... as long as you can change hosting services. I've had my personal site ( https://dwheeler.com https://dwheeler.com ) since 1999. As noted in https://dwheeler.com/aboutsite.html https://dwheeler.com/aboutsite.html my site has been hosted on 4 different systems, and I'm sure that I will move again at some point. Users won't notice - or care - because I can easily move to some other service.

drdeadringer 7y ago
> At least own your domain name I agree and I have a story to add to this. Despite there being a couple ways to spell my first name and literally dozens of ways to spell my last name, I share the same name as a rock star of similar age as myself down to the letter. While I do understand I didn't necessarily need a ".com" TLD URL and that I had other TLD options, it was the first availability I checked for obvious reasons; this is how I discovered my semi-famed name-double. I eventually went with a ".net" TLD URL of my name and it's turned out alright so far -- and it makes perfect sense to me that my alternate actually should have the ".com" version instead of myself. I'm content, likely even happy, with how things turned out. Enter SEO stage left.
- 0xfeba 7y ago
  You're lucky the Rock Star doesn't go all Nissan.com on you (which appears to be NLA).
lancesells 7y ago
Yes. I've had run my own site since 2000 ( https://www.lancesells.com https://www.lancesells.com ) moving it around multiple times. The only thing I've really changed is moving to a static site so there's one less thing to export or import(database). Having my own website I've worked on keeping it speedy and not reliant on any javascript.
a1369209993 7y ago
> At least own your domain name Serious question: How? Aside from .onion[0], all TLDs I know of only allow you to rent a domain name, and will take it away if you don't keep paying their protection racket year-on-year. I would be happy to pay >1000$ to purchase a (human-readable, second-level, etc) domain, if I could actually find where to do so. 0: which is less "own" and more "conjure out of the platonic ether something that no one else is capable of using".

superkuh 7y ago

Yup. People tend to assume running your own site is difficult but running a static webserver is dead simple. As long as you don't involve all the unneeded dynamic language and database it's secure and doesn't really need updating all the time either. 90% of people can run a static web server on their home connection and it would fulfill their every requirement (as well as solving almost all 'problems' that exist on the web). Home connections of a couple megabits are certainly fast enough for a personal site.

coldpie 7y ago
Mm, nah. Running a DNS server, choosing an HTTP server and keeping all the related software up to date is a lot to ask even of a techie. And that's not even getting into dynamic IP issues.
- superkuh 7y ago
  Why do you need to run a DNS server? My IP only changes once every few years with Comcast. I use one of the many free DNS services available online (been w/zoneedit for almost 2 decades) and set it manually when it does change. But they also support dyndns that most home routers have options to use for updates. Most webservers are very secure when they're not running php and mysql too. They have far less of a security problem than a browser executing arbitrary javascript and require updating only once a year or two, if at all.
- icebraining 7y ago
  You don't need to run a DNS server, just some utility that updates the record when your IP changes. There are many, and are quite simple to use (basic text config, or simple GUI). As for maintaining stuff updated, unattended-upgrades on a Debian or Ubuntu LTS system will keep your system patched for five years, and it's very rare that the infrastructure stuff breaks.
  - slx26 7y ago
    maybe that's the difficult part, finding the uncommon path among all the current trends, clearly distant from these "simple" proposals. it might be easy to set up if you understand how the web works, but that understanding generally comes from some real work/experience we already have, which might not be so easy to pick up. having 1000 simple ways to run a website could be much more complicated than having 2 tricky ways to run a website. specially if you don't know whether any of those ways are simple or not.

ibudiallo 7y ago

For my personal websites, I only ever tried wordpress around 10 years ago before I built my own from scratch. https://idiallo.com https://idiallo.com What I find interesting is that a swat of new developers thinks that the only options are: 1. free hosting with lock-in platforms (medium, blogger, ...) 2. Clever hacks (github, netlify, cloudflare...) 3. Expensive hosting ($40/m+) The alternative is to use shared hosting for simple content. Or cheap but excellent services like linode, digitalocean, or vultr. They set you back $5/m or less. Host your own content, make local backups. If your provider complains, find another host, copy and paste your content and update the dns.

derefr 7y ago
I use the “clever hacks” because I’m afraid of one of my blog articles getting linked to on Reddit. Even if there are no ads on my site, I want it to stay up and readable, and I don’t want to suddenly get an egress-bandwidth bill in the process! Also, despite having done ops for years, I don’t want my continued willingness to do ops (as with DO/Linode/Vultr) or my continued usage of my small municipal ISP (or even my small municipal ISP’s continued existence, as these often get bought up, and their branding—including web-host domains!—gets blown away in the process) to determine whether my site stays up. I want my website to continue to exist, at the same URL, even if I retire and go live in the mountains with no Internet for the rest of my life. I want my works to outlive me! There are “good” shared HTML hosts that have been around for decades and will likely be around for decades more—SDF.org is one; most universities with accounts for alumni are another—but these don’t tend to be able to handle the bandwidth, so you have to combine them with a service like Cloudflare anyway. But really, “slug-based static-site build-product hosting” like Github Pages and Netlify are just shared HTML hosts as well—with some extra features, sure, but ones that you can ignore if you please. With GH Pages, for example, you don’t have to use a static-site generator if you don’t want to; you can just commit content assets directly to your github-pages branch. And the result has the same properties you list: if Github complains, I can take that same repo and push it to another site; or it can gracefully degrade to being a folder (that happens to have a .git dir in it) that I can plop into any public_html directory.
- 7y ago

the_arun 7y ago

Anyone has interesting themes for Jekyll/Hugo? I liked the layout in this blog - https://www.jotaen.net/ https://www.jotaen.net/ However, it is a custom template.

splitbrain 7y ago

"your website as a record" resonates with me. I recently redesigned my website (which is online since 2001) and one new feature I added is a random button. Clicking it will open a random page which is often a blog post I wrote many years ago. It's easily the most fun feature for me personally as it makes me remember things of my life... I don't know how much other visitors use or like it. If you want, give it a try at https://www.splitbrain.org https://www.splitbrain.org - it's the dice in the menu.

Theodores 7y ago
A very nice website. It is rare to have websites of such character these days. Potentially everyone should be able to have a website that offers up some of their personality, yours has that, anyone can tell some effort has gone into it. The only thing though is that in the contact details there is the 'I get so many emails that I will probably ignore yours' message. This I don't think is necessary. It sends out the wrong message. You could have a template or two to handle enquiries that you don't have time to reply to so you don't discourage that one person who does want to reach out to you but does value your time more than their own. Those that don't care about your time will ignore your 'don't bother emailing me coz I am too busy' message anyway. It is crazy how we have all of these methods of communication but we have all put up barriers. There was a time when everyone had their name, phone number and address in the phone book. We used to actually use the phone in those days too.

cardingggg 7y ago

I totally agree with this. While running and maintaining your own website isn't trivial enough yet that _anybody_ can just up and do it, it's definitely something most anyone willing to spend a weekend can pick up and learn, with maybe a bit of help. Been considering moving towards a static site generator setup myself, and is currently looking at Gatsby. I'm curious though --- barring preference for language, which generator would you recommend? I keep hearing about Jekyll, Hugo, Gatsby, etc. but haven't really come across any objective comparisons between options.

zacssite 7y ago
It comes down to how much time and effort you want to invest into learning a new system, which should depend on how many of the advanced features those systems enable that you will use. For me, that answer was as little as possible and zero. I just need a good static site generator. There are a bunch to choose from these days, but fewer back when I was faced with this decision in the early 2000s, so I wrote my own. If you don't need anything flashy, use something like my engine (First Crack: https://zacs.site/projects.html#firstCrack https://zacs.site/projects.html#firstCrack) to build the site and GitHub Pages to serve it. If there's a certain feature you want that a combo like that does not allow for, find the simplest engine that meets your needs, learn to use it, then go from there. Most of the big names are pretty good these days, so you can't really go wrong no matter which you choose.
llukas 7y ago
Just use one with biggest following ie. Jekyll - you'll get tons of tutorials/themes/extensions. Using standard representation of posts (ie. Jekyll uses markdown - which integrates nicely with R markdown/bookdown) is a plus.

saagarjha 7y ago

> Under my definition, you must have 1) total control over your content, and 2) the ability to make it public or private at any time. I run my own website (https://saagarjha.com https://saagarjha.com, naturally) but I can't guarantee either of these. My host (GitHub Pages) can take down my content at any time if I annoy them enough, and once I make something public I don't suffer from the misconception that I can make it private again. I can, however, rehost my content (crucially, at the same "location"), which I think is nearly good enough.

meerita 7y ago

I run my website too (see profile). I use only Jekyll to compile it locally. I did my own CSS framework https://github.com/meerita/utilcss https://github.com/meerita/utilcss. I host it on a DO instance. I deploy it from a local terminal command.

OrgNet 7y ago

I do and pay about $10/year for my VPS... so about $20 per year with domain name (domain names are overpriced)... I'm thinking about going to IP only... that way it would not crap out when google's DNS goes down...

verisimilitudes 7y ago

I can see why this article with a very basic premise is so popular. * It's short, so the average reader here has enough attention span for it. * It's obvious, so that leaves plenty of room for patting oneself on the back. * It's simple, so one can reference their own writings about a similar topic or related to it in some way. * It's about a topic that lets the commenter here show off their own website and bloviate about themselves. This is nothing against the author, but against Hacker News and how so much interesting material fails to ever reach the front page.

sequoia 7y ago
Agreed: I struggle to understand why this is considered a useful post to a broad audience of people who all already know what a static site generator is. I will offer one critique of the article itself: the repeated (often many times within one sentence) self referential linking is tedious and makes reading difficult. Am I supposed to read 4 different articles before I get to the end of one sentence in this one, or is this just some SEO voodoo?
davesmith1983 7y ago
This post reads of "Why are people liking what I don't like?". This article might be stating the obvious to you. However sometimes people have to be reminded that things can be done simply without the nonsense of cloud hosting, CDNs, automated deployments and all the guff that comes with it. This sort of article is pertinent in the days of many of the large tech sites being censorious (there was a discussion with 100s of comments about youtube censoring infosec channels), sites with megabytes of JavaScript and even many CSS libraries / frameworks requiring a build tools for styling. Reminding people that it doesn't have to be this way is important and it doesn't need your approval.
buboard 7y ago
* it s timely, because a lot of things are censored lately * it’s something that a lot of people agree on, but it is NOT happening, so it s not obvious

logfromblammo 7y ago

> "<body style="...;display:none;" ...>" Please don't do this. If your website is your resume, and you intentionally obscure it from me, I'm not going to hire you.

buboard 7y ago

Every creator who relies on internet for income should have their website separately, there is no excuse, its cheap to get lots of storage , and most hosting providers are not hellishly censorious like social media. What we need is a wordpress-like system that allows uploading and tagging everything in a consisten format with itemproperties. Then, e.g. youtube could autoimport a videos from the feed when asked to. I dont know if such a system exist, but it seems pretty obvious that everyone who sells their content through social media should have an online fallback/backup.

mmphosis 7y ago

$12 + tax a year for each domain name. If you know a way around this, let me know. Using a single dynamic IP address, if the IP address changes I manually point the domain names to the new IP address. It's a bit of a pain, but the IP address really doesn't change that often. I could automate this with a great amount of time and trouble. I wish the Domain Registrar didn't have such a crazy panel for configuring such things. The ISP gave me a simpler version of their modem for what they call "bridge mode" that doesn't block ports. I'm paying for Internet Service, if they block ports they are not providing that service. The notion of a server is lost on me, there are packets being sent and received over the internet, if they block that they are not providing Internet Service. Port 80 on the home router forwards to a Raspberry Pi. My outages are when the power goes out, the IP address changes, or the ISP goes down. A Raspberry Pi 2 Model B / raspbian runs Apache, I've considered trying others like nginx. I don't need https and auto-renewing SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt, if you want to read something everyone can read it. If someone happens to modify the packets in the middle somewhere out there, so be it. I don't want you to login, and I definitely don't want your information -- if you have something interesting maybe I'll find it out there wherever and on whatever that might be...

megous 7y ago
For my home IP I use cname to a dynamic dns service provided by my router manufacturer. There are free dyndns services, that integrate with many home router brands. Then you don't need to automate the main domain A/AAAA record changes, which can be cumbersome, depending on the provider.

avaika 7y ago

Don't forget one small nuance: own website requires much (MUCH) more time for initial setup, than any other solution as service which is suggested instead. Especially if it's not a simple static site. And probably for maintenance as well (but it's debatable). Even for tech guys (especially those, who's not in webdev).

Spearchucker 7y ago

I've been running this since 1995 - https://www.wittenburg.co.uk https://www.wittenburg.co.uk. Most of the stuff on it isn't public (lists, home photos, documents) and I can't imagine not having it. It's super lightweight and yes, I still use HTML tables. Because they're easier to understand 5 years later than div tags.

provlem 7y ago

There are various platform like - usercv.com, about.me who provides personal resume website without coding. github.io is already there who provides such thing if someone knows coding.

AlchemistCamp 7y ago

I think this is great advice and I tend to agree with it. However, TechLead has recently given me pause. He spun up his YouTube channel and then quickly monetized it by dropping Paypal links into the video descriptions. He later made a video talking about doing this and how he thought it was a waste for people wanting to sell dresses, for example, to build a site with a cart and checkout, etc, instead of just selling right where their audience already was. At the size his channel is now, I think it's a bit crazy of him not to have a site, but he's had larger success as an entrepreneur than I have thus far...

aiyodev 7y ago

This seems like a good place to ask. Are there any free and reliable services to notify you when your website/web service is unavailable?