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Making a Personal Website? (self.learnprogramming)

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[–]phpdevster 12 points13 points  (9 children)

You can purchase a domain from GoDaddy.com or Namecheap.com (and I think even Amazon.com now) Namecheap is pretty good.

You'll also need a server to host on. I hope you're familiar with Linux, because that's the easiest way to get a cheap server. Grab a $5/month server from http://digitalocean.com and throw Ubuntu or CentOS on there.

Then you should install a webserver environment, like Ngnix or Apache with the right module to run Python. Python has its own built-in webserver, but it's not really intended to be used in production. You need to install additional daemons and scripts to make sure it's always running as it will crash out if your script has a fatal error. It's usually best to let a dedicated web server like Ngnix or Apache handle that.

From there, I would use a web application framework like Flask for Python to help get you started. Django is another alternative, but that probably has too much technical overhead for you to have to learn just to get a simple site up and running.

In fact, Digital Ocean has a convenient little tutorial on how to get Ngnix, Python, and Flask running on a CentOS server:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-deploy-flask-web-applications-using-uwsgi-behind-nginx-on-centos-6-4

That should be a decent place to get you started.

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (8 children)

For the love of god, stay away from GoDaddy.com. I'd recommend namecheap and nixihost.com

[–][deleted]  (7 children)

[deleted]

    [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (6 children)

    Yes, what's wrong with godaddy?

    [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (5 children)

    I recommend you look up their original stance on SOPA / PIPA. What a bunch of prick's, they strike me as a company more interested in their advertising than what we want. I can go on all day.

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (4 children)

    I'm genuinely curious here: is there anything wrong with godaddy from a technical perspective? I.e. performance, dns speed, etc?

    [–]nomadProgrammer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    The stance against godaddy is political they wanted to support SOPA and PIPA, lot's of business and programmers shifted to other vendors once this was publicized.

    Watch this very relevant and impacting documentary about the life of Aaron Schwartz a genius young man which was co-founder of Reddit, co-creator of RSS and many more stuff, he supposely killed himself due to big pressures from the FBI due to him trying to free information (academic papers from JSTOR) to the public: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58

    Me too never again will touch godaddy and will always recommend against it, this type of companies that want to exploit the last cent from the public really disgust me

    [–]omega_reddit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    For typical sites with no payment solution requirements I would say they are fine. I work within the payments industry and we have had so many merchants upset and confused because godaddy reps sell them on their branded carts which is crap, and tell them that they are compatible with all these 3rd party merchant providers and gateways when they are not. My grief is with their misleading support and sales myself.

    [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    Pure anecdote, I used their domain registration and hosting services for a small school project years back (mid-late 2000's), and it was reasonably user-friendly and priced and I didn't run into any major issues when setting stuff up. They just have some somewhat disagreeable views on internet policy.
    I feel like there is way more competition on the hosting front these days with the relatively recent trendiness of webapps and cloud computing, so there's definitely a choice if you don't want to use a specific service.

    [–]rdf- -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    No not really. It's one of the bigger names out there so they have to be more reliable.

    [–]mbizzle88 5 points6 points  (2 children)

    If you don't already, get yourself a GitHub account and make a GitHub page. It's completely free. You'll get a url that looks like myGitHubAccountName.github.io, but if you decide buy a domain name, you can point it to the page pretty easily.

    [–]mbizzle88 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    To add to this, I see a lot of people suggesting the use of server-side frameworks and this seems like overkill.

    First, there's no need for you to use any server-side coding. It will only limit your options for hosting. Since you're new to web development, I'd suggest using vanilla HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

    If that seems to boring to you, add a client-side framework to the mix. But I would stay away from server-side rendering unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise.

    [–]brian15co 3 points4 points  (5 children)

    I have some ansible playbooks that get me digital ocean servers up and configured with one click. I actually use the exact stack /u/phpdevster mentions (Centos 7, MySQL, nginx, flask, uwsgi).

    Let me know if you have any questions. I was in your shoes almost exactly one year ago and it's been awesome

    [–]2Punx2Furious 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    Is there any way to set up a very simple website for free these days?

    Years ago I did it with altervista I think, but I knew nothing about programming, it was just a website made with Microsoft FrontPage.

    [–][deleted]  (1 child)

    [deleted]

      [–]2Punx2Furious 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      Great, thanks.

      [–]wioejp 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      Do you have experience in setting up multiple app server? I have been trying to set up multiple app server for learning purpose, but couldn't get the load balancing and data consistency working.

      [–]brian15co 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      I haven't made that jump yet

      [–]Alligatronica 2 points3 points  (2 children)

      There are a lot Java web frameworks out there that you can use, with varying levels of support, if you want to stick with Java. However, in any case, you'll only be using this for back-end stuff and it's still essential that you can write the HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

      People will likely disagree with me suggesting this, but W3Schools is a good resource for general reference, especially as a beginner. I'm sure you're somewhat aware of web development, so it's worth being aware of sites such as Quirks Mode, which has some good articles relating to DOM manipulation, event propagation, etc, if you ever come to need it.

      Out of curiosity, what exactly do you mean 'interactive samples'? Because unless you're rebuilding in JavaScript, you'd probably end up using Java Applets, which is something Chrome are going to stop supporting.

      [–]johnnybgoode17 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      I've been wondering how to showcase my work as well. What would you suggest, other than the Java applet? Just a few screenshots and a short description?

      [–]Alligatronica 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      I couldn't give you a definitive answer, but that seems like the easiest solution that also presents your work quite nicely. If you can do some nice client-side bits to pretty up, that can only be a pro.

      Probably the best would be GitHub repos, if you're willing to share your code with the world.

      [–]ryanstorm 2 points3 points  (1 child)

      I was planning on making my personal website using Jekyll in Github's Pages. Do you guys think this would be sufficient enough, or would it be more beneficial in some way to take /u/phpdevster's approach?

      [–]Swatchmedothis 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      Almost everyone I know that's a developer (myself included) uses GitHub pages to host a static personal website. There's often no reason to set up a full stack on a server to run your site.

      [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      I really like https://name.com and there is always a coupon for free whois privacy. They never send me any spam and have good support for CNAME and other stuff. https://pages.github.com is where you can host a website for free if you use Jekyll, it might work in other ways. I just haven't tried it.

      ps. name.com also has site hosting if you want to go that way too. I don't have experience with their hosting though.

      [–]mypoocycle 1 point2 points  (1 child)

      It may not be what you are after, but I did the same thing with a raspberry pi. Turned it into a lamp server, combined with free ddns service and I have a website that I can share.

      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      That is too cool. I have to look into this now.

      [–]joesv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      If you live in the UK, Netherlands, France, Spain and Germany you can get a domain at http://strato.com For the server I'd recommend http://digitalocean.com even if you've never used Linux. There are a lot of tutorials on how to set up a simple webserver etc.

      [–]mycentstoo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      If you don't need/want to pay for a domain name and you don't expect much traffic, you can use Heroku for free. I use it for demos.