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Run Your Own Website

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Re: Run Your Own Website

#31

Post by llao »

okaleniuk wrote: post #10

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…

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.

Re: Run Your Own Website

#32

Post by gbuk2013 »

dvtrn wrote: post #28
gbuk2013 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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.

Re: Run Your Own Website

#33

Post by superkuh »

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.

Re: Run Your Own Website

#34

Post by dvtrn »

gbuk2013 wrote: post #32
dvtrn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

Sorry for the pun here, heh but:

Simply because it is very limiting.

Seems like a limited/narrow definition of maintaining a website, just because there are different options of platforms and tools used to put content in the user's browser. Ultimately, for the browser, the result is the same, no?

Edit:

Following your edit, I can see an argument being made that maintaining static sites coming with a different workflow than maintaining a CMS and why some may not prefer it --personally, the mutability of the workflow for many of these stacks is the appeal of SSGs for me (especially, more recently 11ty[1] which I'm thinking of porting my personal site to).

[1] https://www.11ty.io/

Re: Run Your Own Website

#35

Post by coldpie »

superkuh wrote: post #33

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 t…

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.

Re: Run Your Own Website

#36

Post by coldpie »

llao wrote: post #31
okaleniuk wrote: post #10

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…

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.

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.

Re: Run Your Own Website

#37

Post by roywiggins »

marktangotango wrote: post #20

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?

Heroku? https://www.heroku.com/free

Re: Run Your Own Website

#38

Post by ilogik »

superkuh wrote: post #33

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 t…

You don't even need a home server, something like netlify or surge.sh makes it dead-simple.

Re: Run Your Own Website

#39

Post by ibudiallo »

For my personal websites, I only ever tried wordpress around 10 years ago before I built my own from scratch.

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.

Re: Run Your Own Website

#40

Post by gbuk2013 »

dvtrn wrote: post #34
gbuk2013 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry for the pun here, heh but: Simply because it is very limiting. Seems like a limited/narrow definition of maintaining a website, just because there are different options of platforms and tools used to put content in the user's browser. Ultimately, for the browser, the result is the same, no? Edit: Following your edit, I can see an argument being made that maintaining static sites coming with a different workflow…

My advice is based on my own experience, so obviously I think it is true.

It is my job to know a LOT about putting content in users browsers (from TCP protocol level up to the HTML) but I still think that GitHub pages is too limited for anything but very simple site.

It’s cool to have a static site - it’s not cool to be forced to only have a static site.

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