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Tiny websites are great

tinyprojects.dev

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Re: Tiny websites are great

#71
post #55

Mine[1] is rather tiny and simple. It is actually generated by the tree command in about a second. It's a port from the gopher protocol and is hosted by the venerable sdf.org[2]. I decided to pay an exorbitant $60 a year for an enhanced membership simply to have an https address and some other assorted goodies[3]... [1] https://every.sdf.org/ [2] https://sdf.org/ [3] https://sdf.org/?tutorials/metaarray

Thanks for sharing SDF, I hadn’t heard of it. Seems really cool

Re: Tiny websites are great

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will find a cheaper hosting option. GitHub and GitLab pages are both free for static sites. I've used both, they both are pretty painless. You basically click "make this a website" and tell it your URL. Automatically HTTPS, completely free.

Wow, I didn't know you can even hook up your own custom domains (looking at GitLab pages). That's pretty amazing.

Yeah, I've been using github pages for my personal site. It even supports HTTPS these days. I only pay for the domain.

Re: Tiny websites are great

#74
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WYSIWYG editors are universally bad, and so are Markdown ones. The benefit of Markdown is that you just write it in a text editor. You don't need syntax highlighting to use it effectively. Take reddit, as an example, which got millions of people to write perfect Markdown as intuitively as writing English.

It really depends on the editor. Some editors give you raw access to the underlying code and apply styles to it as you type, kind of like syntax highlighting. Some actually try to be rich text editors with a (usually restricted) Markdown input. You can guess which ones make me want to flip a table. (Hint: Slack, fix your editor!)

If you think Slack is bad, try https://github.community/.

Re: Tiny websites are great

#75
post #16

I love this initiative in principle, but the instructions left a rather sour taste in my mouth. Create a Firebase app, download and install Node and run some arcane cli commands? For what? To upload a 10-byte HTML file somewhere? Please, do yourself and us a favour and sign up for a free account on https://neocities.org , and make a quirky website by hand for all of us to enjoy. I half want to write a post like this…

Yeah, that whole Firebase thing was not necessary. After creating the public folder, dragging and dropping it onto Netlify would've instantly given you a public website. No commands necessary. I use Netlify for everything, even hosting a static blog generated in Hugo. All free, only thing I pay for is my domain.

Re: Tiny websites are great

#76
post #16

I love this initiative in principle, but the instructions left a rather sour taste in my mouth. Create a Firebase app, download and install Node and run some arcane cli commands? For what? To upload a 10-byte HTML file somewhere? Please, do yourself and us a favour and sign up for a free account on https://neocities.org , and make a quirky website by hand for all of us to enjoy. I half want to write a post like this…

I find myself torn on the specific instructions. It's certainly a lot more arcane than my early sites, but that was mostly because there was a whole lot of boilerplate handled by the host (Enter these details into your FTP program, put your files into public_html, start with index.html).

I didn't have any idea what Apache was, how files were served, or really anything about internet infrastructure. And that's fine, certainly good for a kid or to whip up a quick business site, but it doesn't satisfy the hacker in me today. There's too much magic going on behind the scenes for me to feel much ownership of it.

I suppose it sort of depends who you're aiming it at. TFA didn't feel to me like it was trying to approach novices (after all, it's talking about leaving frameworks and libraries behind, novices aren't much using frameworks). Your instructions are good for an easy introduction for people with no web development experience, to recreate that sense of ease, but I think it's a different thing from what the article is going for. Even a simple site requires a fair bit under the hood, because serving files isn't all that simple unless you just hide it away from the end-user.

Re: Tiny websites are great

#78
post #16

I love this initiative in principle, but the instructions left a rather sour taste in my mouth. Create a Firebase app, download and install Node and run some arcane cli commands? For what? To upload a 10-byte HTML file somewhere? Please, do yourself and us a favour and sign up for a free account on https://neocities.org , and make a quirky website by hand for all of us to enjoy. I half want to write a post like this…

I find myself torn on the specific instructions. It's certainly a lot more arcane than my early sites, but that was mostly because there was a whole lot of boilerplate handled by the host (Enter these details into your FTP program, put your files into public_html, start with index.html). I didn't have any idea what Apache was, how files were served, or really anything about internet infrastructure. And that's fine, c…

I don't know, I mostly agree with you, but I disagree that a simple site requires that much. Just drop the files in a folder in some web server and you're done.

Re: Tiny websites are great

#80
post #16

I love this initiative in principle, but the instructions left a rather sour taste in my mouth. Create a Firebase app, download and install Node and run some arcane cli commands? For what? To upload a 10-byte HTML file somewhere? Please, do yourself and us a favour and sign up for a free account on https://neocities.org , and make a quirky website by hand for all of us to enjoy. I half want to write a post like this…

Agreed, you'll lose access to all that server-side stuff after not too long. Just do something dead simple: single page of vanilla html/css. You'll have to move it at some point, the hosting server will need updating or shut down, and a single file is way easier to move around.
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