I was supposed to be building a website but I’ve let the perfect be the enemy of the good and not selected a service because all of the services I was recommended are too confusing for me.
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I was supposed to be building a website but I’ve let the perfect be the enemy of the good and not selected a service because all of the services I was recommended are too confusing for me. I don’t know what a “subnet mask” is and I don’t have the spare time to learn what I’d need to know to fill out the forms I keep running into when setting this up.
This is why people end up on “go daddy” — but before I give up THAT much I’ll ask again if there is a service for novices that isn’t evil.
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I was supposed to be building a website but I’ve let the perfect be the enemy of the good and not selected a service because all of the services I was recommended are too confusing for me. I don’t know what a “subnet mask” is and I don’t have the spare time to learn what I’d need to know to fill out the forms I keep running into when setting this up.
This is why people end up on “go daddy” — but before I give up THAT much I’ll ask again if there is a service for novices that isn’t evil.
I keep thinking of things I need to host on my own site: stories, wikis, small programming projects etc.
Alternately maybe I should just study & learn about all of the details of DNS, etc? I understand that I can register a domain with one service then pay another to run a server for me (to host my pages and little apps). So, the first step is to register the domain and then give that info to a hosting company. The step of filling out that form is what keeps stopping me. I’m so confused.
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I keep thinking of things I need to host on my own site: stories, wikis, small programming projects etc.
Alternately maybe I should just study & learn about all of the details of DNS, etc? I understand that I can register a domain with one service then pay another to run a server for me (to host my pages and little apps). So, the first step is to register the domain and then give that info to a hosting company. The step of filling out that form is what keeps stopping me. I’m so confused.
@futurebird
How about installing Apache on your own machine at home - if you have a spare or a Raspberry Pi it may be wiser than using your desktop.Then you keep an eye on the IP address your supplier gives your router and publish that as needed.
You can buy a domain name, and pay a DNS operator to point that at your IP address, but as with many things, you don't have to.
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I keep thinking of things I need to host on my own site: stories, wikis, small programming projects etc.
Alternately maybe I should just study & learn about all of the details of DNS, etc? I understand that I can register a domain with one service then pay another to run a server for me (to host my pages and little apps). So, the first step is to register the domain and then give that info to a hosting company. The step of filling out that form is what keeps stopping me. I’m so confused.
@futurebird And don’t forget to plaster your website with images of little Pica.
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@futurebird And don’t forget to plaster your website with images of little Pica.
This is the true purrpose of the internet obviously.
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@futurebird
How about installing Apache on your own machine at home - if you have a spare or a Raspberry Pi it may be wiser than using your desktop.Then you keep an eye on the IP address your supplier gives your router and publish that as needed.
You can buy a domain name, and pay a DNS operator to point that at your IP address, but as with many things, you don't have to.
I already have an apache intrAnet server for my CS club that they are *supposed* to be managing (but I end up doing all the hard stuff… lazy children…) so that might not be a terrible idea HOWEVER— my non-school public internet stuff can from time to time generate traffic (tens of thousands of hits an hour, such as the NYC neighborhood quiz I did a few years back) I don’t feel knowledgeable enough to manage a server with this kind traffic?
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I keep thinking of things I need to host on my own site: stories, wikis, small programming projects etc.
Alternately maybe I should just study & learn about all of the details of DNS, etc? I understand that I can register a domain with one service then pay another to run a server for me (to host my pages and little apps). So, the first step is to register the domain and then give that info to a hosting company. The step of filling out that form is what keeps stopping me. I’m so confused.
@futurebird I don't know what services to suggest that aren't considered "evil" these days, but I can at least generalize a bit:
There are 3 services you need for a website: Registrar, DNS, and server/web hosting. Many services will offer 2 or all 3 of these, but you can get them from 3 different places if you want.
1. Registrar: where you buy the antsarecool[dot]com or whatever domain from. They should just need your email, name, billing info, the name of the domain you want, and how many years you want to buy it for. You set up in their dashboard either the DNS options if you buy DNS from them, or a few "NS" records specified by your DNS provider to point to your DNS host, in which case they run a little bit of DNS, just to specify where the rest of your DNS is.
2. DNS: points from www[dot]antsarecool[dot]com or wiki[dot]antsarecool[dot]com to the correct server hosting the website. You usually set up an account with your email address and billing info, then create a "zone" for the domain (antsarecool[dot]com), and copy the "NS" records it gives you to your registrar. Then you start creating records. "A" records should be all you need, unless your web host tells you to use CNAME instead. An "A" record for @ pointing to 123.123.123.123 means antsarecool[dot]com in a browser goes to the host at 123.123.123.123. "A wiki 123.123.123.231" points wiki[dot]antsarecool[dot]com to the server at 123.123.123.231.
3. Web Hosting: This part is wildly different depending what company you go with. You can use a Raspberry Pi or a spare computer in your closet with some server software like Apache or IIS if you're ok with your home's public IP address being connected to your website (then you have to configure your router to forward ports 80 and 443 to said computer, and figure out a plan to update DNS if your home IP address changes). Many people go with a VM from some company like Amazon AWS, Hetzner, or Microsoft Azure, where they give you a computer running Linux or Windows Server that you can remotely connect to and install your software on. And then there are more managed options, that host a specific software like WordPress and give you something like an SFTP folder to put your website files in. -
F myrmepropagandist shared this topic
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@futurebird I don't know what services to suggest that aren't considered "evil" these days, but I can at least generalize a bit:
There are 3 services you need for a website: Registrar, DNS, and server/web hosting. Many services will offer 2 or all 3 of these, but you can get them from 3 different places if you want.
1. Registrar: where you buy the antsarecool[dot]com or whatever domain from. They should just need your email, name, billing info, the name of the domain you want, and how many years you want to buy it for. You set up in their dashboard either the DNS options if you buy DNS from them, or a few "NS" records specified by your DNS provider to point to your DNS host, in which case they run a little bit of DNS, just to specify where the rest of your DNS is.
2. DNS: points from www[dot]antsarecool[dot]com or wiki[dot]antsarecool[dot]com to the correct server hosting the website. You usually set up an account with your email address and billing info, then create a "zone" for the domain (antsarecool[dot]com), and copy the "NS" records it gives you to your registrar. Then you start creating records. "A" records should be all you need, unless your web host tells you to use CNAME instead. An "A" record for @ pointing to 123.123.123.123 means antsarecool[dot]com in a browser goes to the host at 123.123.123.123. "A wiki 123.123.123.231" points wiki[dot]antsarecool[dot]com to the server at 123.123.123.231.
3. Web Hosting: This part is wildly different depending what company you go with. You can use a Raspberry Pi or a spare computer in your closet with some server software like Apache or IIS if you're ok with your home's public IP address being connected to your website (then you have to configure your router to forward ports 80 and 443 to said computer, and figure out a plan to update DNS if your home IP address changes). Many people go with a VM from some company like Amazon AWS, Hetzner, or Microsoft Azure, where they give you a computer running Linux or Windows Server that you can remotely connect to and install your software on. And then there are more managed options, that host a specific software like WordPress and give you something like an SFTP folder to put your website files in.@ZahmbieND This is is super helpful. I didn’t realize that registration and DNS were distinct. And I think that’s what’s been making this so confusing.
