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I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

justinjackson.ca

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Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#171

Post by 411111111111111 »

sph wrote: post #158
eli wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never been easier to host a webpage than it is today. You can host 100s of student sites on a $5/month VPS. The free tier of AWS/GCP/etc are extremely capable. There are free services like Wix and Glitch that let you build a webpage and then mess with the HTML, no domain name needed. The problem of warez is certainly no worse than it was 30 years ago, and there are much better tools to address it. A simple stora…

Signing up to and using AWS or GCP is orders of magnitude more complex than those old free hosting services where you got an FTP username and a password. In fact you could upload directly from Frontpage IIRC, but I could never get it to work. It's simpler for us software engineers, less simple for the snot-nosed webmaster wannabes we were.

Thank goodness you don't need to do any of that then.

If all you want is to host static html, then any free hosting service will suffice. I.e. let them create a GitHub account and show them git add / git commit / git push and you're done.

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#172

Post by eternityforest »

tomhoward wrote: post #20

My 1996 self feels very seen. I think a lot about the way the web was back in the mid 90s, compared to the bleeding-edge technologies of today, particularly blockchain and cryptocurrency. And one major aspect I keep coming back to is that web technologies in the 90s, and even their descendent technologies now, are simple enough for most technology-literate people to understand, and that carried with it a lot of comfo…

I think the difference is cryptocurrency, and the fact that sites are made by programmers, and programmers have a high tolerance for hassles.

When there was less distinction between programmers and just everyday people, convenience was a high priority in the authoring tools.

Web3 could be amazing. There's no reason it couldn't just be like BitTorrent, but for web pages, with even better performance on mobile.

JS frameworks are just files. Nothing really troublesome about that, besides the fact modern expectations demand a backend and CMS, unless you really want the full retro experience.

Even then, most of what backends do could be done by some hypothetical extension to WebDAV for search. Or just like, add a SQLite query verb to HTML with a standard permissions file or something. There are ways this could all be easy.

SSL is another problem. There used to be one protocol and one thing to set up. HTTP. Now you need certs, and it takes a bit more effort, and it's possible to mess up in a way that takes a half hour to fix. Not quite frictionless.

Facebook is free, but personal sites aren't.

Web3 could be exactly what saves us, giving us a standard platform to make sites for free, that does the security for us, doesn't need a domain name, and is generally really easy while still following modern standards.

We could literally have a browser with a "Make a site" button that works like a file manager, with a "Link to seedbox" button.

IPFS and the like are trying, but none quite reach BitTorrent's level of practicality, and they're all weighed down by cryptocurrency.

I think we really do need a Web4.

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#173

Post by LecroJS »

SkipperCat wrote: post #71

Back in the early 2000's, I taught "computers" to a bunch of kids in DC. I first started off with how a computer work; IO, CPU, storage and their eyes glazed over. I quickly ditched that topic and went right to building a web page. Taught them a few HTML tags and they instantly became "webmasters". They were so thrilled. They could create blinking text, could make all the fonts pink. All just by moving around some si…

I tutor kids in my free time from ages 4 up to college. I find that Processing/p5.js is a great tool for teaching younger kids how to use their imagination through the vessel of built-in functions + tweaking arguments to instantly see their input on the canvas in the form of bright, flashy colors/shapes. It requires a much more hands on approach and can really only be done well in 1 on 1 settings. While I wish there was a way for me to be less of a navigator in terms of the amount of code that goes on the screen, I have come to find that kids are generally exceptional at pattern recognition. Even my student that is 4 (although he’s a smart kid) is capable of writing his own scripts now without much guidance in his logic/syntax. I had my own start with micro worlds as a kid, and played with netlogo in a college class. That made me a staunch supporter of kids getting into code through agent/turtle based environments

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#175

Post by [deleted] »

falcolas wrote: post #125
legutierr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its barely good for anything except money laundering and tax evasion You can’t think of any situation where you would want to share access to and control of data with multiple untrusted third parties, where you would need to guarantee not only that data modifications are only executed in an authorized fashion, but also that no previous modifications have been reversed? The list of use cases for that capability is n…

> You can’t think of any situation where you would want to share access and control of data with multiple untrusted third parties, where you would need to guarantee not only that data modifications are only executed in an authorized fasion, but also that no previous modifications have been reversed? Do you mean a cryptographic signature? Been doing those for decades back in email chains and newsgroups. Each message c…

[deleted]

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#176

Post by eli »

sph wrote: post #158
eli wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never been easier to host a webpage than it is today. You can host 100s of student sites on a $5/month VPS. The free tier of AWS/GCP/etc are extremely capable. There are free services like Wix and Glitch that let you build a webpage and then mess with the HTML, no domain name needed. The problem of warez is certainly no worse than it was 30 years ago, and there are much better tools to address it. A simple stora…

Signing up to and using AWS or GCP is orders of magnitude more complex than those old free hosting services where you got an FTP username and a password. In fact you could upload directly from Frontpage IIRC, but I could never get it to work. It's simpler for us software engineers, less simple for the snot-nosed webmaster wannabes we were.

That's because someone did the work of setting up a server for you, configuring the services, and issuing FTP credentials. That part is now a whole lot cheaper and easier and more secure.

It doesn't get much easier than signing up for e.g. Glitch.

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#177

Post by awillen »

pentagrama wrote: post #174

Almost 40, I'm getting older I guess but lately I feel put off with the unnecessary cursing on things that I find interesting.

It's perfectly relevant stylistically - he's talking about a time when things were scrappier and there weren't rules or established standards in his domain (pun intended). This isn't a manual, it's a paean to a time and an attitude that he misses, and cursing is certainly representative of that attitude.

Re: I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

#179

Post by multiplegeorges »

SkipperCat wrote: post #71

Back in the early 2000's, I taught "computers" to a bunch of kids in DC. I first started off with how a computer work; IO, CPU, storage and their eyes glazed over. I quickly ditched that topic and went right to building a web page. Taught them a few HTML tags and they instantly became "webmasters". They were so thrilled. They could create blinking text, could make all the fonts pink. All just by moving around some si…

Glitch (https://glitch.com) is the closest thing I can think of right now.
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