Live data from Hacker News

Have a fucking website

otherstrangeness.com

471–480 of 559 posts

Re: Have a fucking website

#471
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accept that as a software developer, I have a myopic view on it, but it doesn't have to be hard. - Get a domain name - Get a VPS with an nginx image pre-installed - Write a plain text file with the info you want shown (hours, contact info, etc...) Yeah it's not sexy, but it's a start and it can be changed when time and interest allows.

How do I get a domain name? What is a VPS? What the hell is nginx? How do I write a plain text file in Word? I don't have time for this ...

> How do I write a plain text file in Word?

In college I was a TA a course that (among other things) was the first place students would usually encounter C and the CLI. To standardize how things were compiled and run, we would test everything from the assignments on the school's Linux server that everyone had ssh access to. In order to teach the students how to connect to and use it, we'd have a seminar going over the basics of the Unix shell, sshing, text editing, etc. Because every year there would inevitably be some students who got confused about the idea that Word wasn't a text editor, I started demoing during the seminar opening Word, saving a .docx file (the default by the time I was doing this), and then changing the extension to .zip and double clicking it to show that it was full of XML files under the hood.

I'm not sure whether it was fully clear how that worked to all of them, but it did at least seem to cut down on the number of students in office hours who were trying to write their C code in Word, maybe just because they remembered "oh that's the TA who was really adamant that I don't use Word for this".

Re: Have a fucking website

#472
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, setting up a website is a pain. But in reality there’s only a handful of things people care about for your restaurant: what, when, and where. Put up your menu, put up your hours, and put up your location. And a phone number.

I specifically tracked this problem and built https://lleu.site to try and get businesses in my city off of social media. Built a menu editor. Has a built in blog and image galleries. Events calendar and event posts. Has a single page simple mode and multi page editor. Contact form with message intake and forwarding. Easy UI that I don’t change underfoot every quarter so its consistent. Works on mobile and low powere…

My first reaction was that it was visually intimidating for a non-computer person. I went through the workflow of the demo and it was pretty easy, but I suspect most people wouldn't make it that far.

Re: Have a fucking website

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a twelve year old kid who is proactively using LLMs to build websites for lawn-mowing businesses, calling them up, asking them if they want it for $200, and closing deals in seconds. I know it sounds far-fetched, but he does all the work up-front before even contacting them, using logos and info from Facebook or Google. He's cleared several thousand dollars so far. I get that the owners aren't going to be the…

Once he creates the website, does he also host it and handle the billing for his clients? Is he using a website builder like Square space or hosting on AWS? The hurdle is more than just building the site, a lot of really small non-technical businesses don't want the trouble of handling the billing and maintenance of the site.

I mean, for a 12 year old, $200 and not having to do any more work in the future might be a good deal, and for a business, a $200 one-time probably seems like a steal. I agree that there might be long-term issues for them if they don't know how to maintain them, but what are they going to do, sue the 12 year old?

Re: Have a fucking website

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accept that as a software developer, I have a myopic view on it, but it doesn't have to be hard. - Get a domain name - Get a VPS with an nginx image pre-installed - Write a plain text file with the info you want shown (hours, contact info, etc...) Yeah it's not sexy, but it's a start and it can be changed when time and interest allows.

Realistically, most people don't have the expertise of setting up HTTPS enabled web hosting on nginx (maybe Caddy will be easier.) There is just so much prerequisite knowledge for a non technical person to know. What they do instead is either - Pay for a shared hosting plan on one of the big players like Dreamhost, Bluehost, Hostinger. - Install wordpress in one click - Do everything in Wordpress. - Pray that no one…

Agree.

From my personal experience I'd add a lot Director/Sr Director in relatively technical companies who manage scores of web application developers. So when you say most, it could literally be almost everyone.

Re: Have a fucking website

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a meme one time that went something like this: "AI is so cool, I asked ChatGPT to combine a card game with a flight simulator and it did it!" "Yeah, that is pretty cool I guess." "My question for you is, what do I do with the code it gave me?" "What?" "Where do I put the code to make a game?"

Just ask ChatGPT for that too, it'll happily walk you through standing up Unity or whatever.

I just wanted to see what was possible with Codex and Claude Code. Without my ever getting involved with the actual work, both were able to create rudimentary weather apps and load them on my phone. I think I had to follow instructions for what it couldn't access, but I fed it error messages any time something didn't work and was pretty impressed what could be accomplished.

Re: Have a fucking website

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did travel agents do when they made a mistake? I don’t think they reimbursed people?

They were in a position to notice and correct most mistakes near-immediately, or at least shortly after making it. For most other cases, apologies and/or reimbursements backed by insurance if needed, transparent to the customer. In self-service, all that is responsibility of the user, but it's all built on requests to third parties, so the user is not in a position to unilaterally fix a bad request.

The travel agent is also not in a position to "unilaterally" fix a bad request, they are also requesting other parties to do things.

Travel agents were not outlawed. Most people just prefer to save money and do the work themselves (for most trips) rather than pay a travel agent.

Re: Have a fucking website

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did travel agents do when they made a mistake? I don’t think they reimbursed people?

There's multiple levels missing when you do it yourself. Usually they would do their best to sort things out. At the very least it was a single call to deal with the issue to someone who knew how to rebook flights, find new hotels, whatever, not you struggling to figure things out on your phone. For a full mistake, yes, they'd usually reimburse you, if not there are regulations around refunds and things like small cl…

>Doing it yourself? Good luck! Hope you've got good service on your phone where ever you happen to be when things go wrong.

90% of travel is probably happening where mobile networks are available. Also, since most travel seems to happen without travel agents today, it appears that "luck" is not that necessary, otherwise people wouldn't be choosing to forego travel agents.

Re: Have a fucking website

#478

I definitely view it as a red flag if a business doesn't have a website in 2026. It doesn't need to be a fancy website, but does at least need a list of products, business hours, work samples, and contact info. If they don't have that, then I view it as an indication that other aspects of their business might also be lacking in professionality or high friction. That being said, if they have a strong presence on Googl…

I'm curious what you're looking for on a website that you can't otherwise find on a well organized Google Map page or Instagram profile. For a restaurant, as long as I can see a menu, I'm satisfied. Even if it's a menu on DoorDash or whatever other menu apps there are. Also I look for reviews on both Google and yelp. I know they can be gamed but I look for low reviews as well. Zero low reviews is a red flag imo. For…

Or in my case, I just call them.

Re: Have a fucking website

#479

Someone wrote and deleted a comment saying > I don't get it. LLMs are supposed to have 100% bridged this gap from "normie" to "DIY website." What's missing? This is an all too common thought process among technologists, so: Where to even start? Well, let's start that every single "AI" company is massively overhyping everything to try to avoid any unfortunate realizations about the emperor's clothes regarding their Ca…

I accept that as a software developer, I have a myopic view on it, but it doesn't have to be hard. - Get a domain name - Get a VPS with an nginx image pre-installed - Write a plain text file with the info you want shown (hours, contact info, etc...) Yeah it's not sexy, but it's a start and it can be changed when time and interest allows.

[dead]

Re: Have a fucking website

#480
post #159

Easier said than done, and completely ignoring the intricacies of "just have a website". I can write the html, CSS, JavaScript needed for a website, I can spin up a local web server to serve these files, but setting up an internet facing website, no. No clue how to go about it, how to secure it, and how to maintain it. Give me a step by step guide that is simple, and can ensure security and privacy, and I'll have a w…

If you already have your HTML and CSS, just upload it to https://surge.sh/ or another one of the bajillions of static site hosting services.
Post reply on HN