Personal Website Possibilities

[xRyokenx]

Hey Guys,

I'm looking into eventually getting my own personal website. I'd kinda like to have my blog, artwork, music, comic, etc. to all be hosted in the same place and don't know much about premade software to sort it all out right, hosting, or basically anything I'd really need for my own website. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

Note that I don't currently have the money for a website of my own but I'd like to look into all of this in advance for when I do have the money.

Thanks,
Anthony

[d_stilgar]

Well, I have my own site (www.modsandends.com). It's technically owned by my brother with a whole block of sites he owns and hosts. I'm using wordpress for my blog. All in all . . . it's . . . ok at best. Wordpress is alright but not great and it didn't integrate well with the forums I was running, which got hit by spam constantly no matter what measures I took. I'm not web savvy as much as I am tech savvy. Running my own site has been irritating. I want to focus on content creation, not content management.

That said, I've been looking heavily into squarespace. It's not particularly cheap, but it's not horribly expensive either and the design process is simplified so much. I would check it out and see what you think. They also have a 14 day free trial. I'm going to play around with that when I get serious about redesigning my site and see how I like it.

Good luck!

[Oneslowz28]

Since you are new to everything the best thing to do would be to find a Content Management System (CMS) and learn it. Several of us here use Drupal. It will do everything you want and then some. An aditional bonus is that so many of us use drupal that we can help you with most questions you may have. You can even install it on your computer and build your site now so its perfect when you get hosting. (TBCS' is a partial Drupal site)

There are free hosting services out there. I pay $8 a month for one of my servers and $4 a month for the other. Datech used a free server for a while and I am sure he would be happy to point you to the site.

Oh when you are ready to buy some hosting, let me know and I can hook you up with my provider and it will give me $75 worth of free hosting.

[Mark_Hardware]

I am interested in this also. I have been planning on getting my own website off the ground, even have the domain name picked out

[Oneslowz28]

Would you guys like a webdesign section here on TBCS?

[Mark_Hardware]

Sure, I don't see why not. It would be awesome to have a point-of-reference. Plus people that know how to run sites wouldn't have to keep answering the same questions.

[slaveofconvention]

I'd advise against a web design section other than for question and answer purposes - there are hundreds of sites out there already doing web design guidance way better than we could ever do without shutting the rest of TBCS down and concentrating on it utterly. It's just too wide a subject - first you mention HTML, ones already put Drupal into the equation, then you end up with CSS, Java, Javascript, PHP, MySQL, Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight, server side, client side, it gets real complex REAL fast lol

Maybe a single forum subject in the help section as opposed to a whole HTML section. I'd lose the rest of my limited free time in there answering stuff lol

[DaveW]

How to make your own website, by Dave.

1) Get a cheap host. How does unrestricted bandwidth, space and databases sound? Good? Then aren't you lucky that cloud computing has taken off in a big way! You can now get all of this for dirt cheap. I use http://www.unlimitedwebhosting.co.uk/ who are pretty good; traffic over port 80 (your website) is lightning fast. They do throttle other ports, so FTP isn't so quick. In the US, something like this would work. http://www.hostmonster.com/

2) Get some free open-source software! As has been mentioned, Drupal is fantastic for basic content. There are alternatives however, such as Wordpress. Check out the wikipedia list of free CMS.

3) Start installing plug-ins! If you want to host pictures, get a photography plugin. Music? A media player! Comics? Wordpress + Comic addin. If you can think of it, there's a plugin for it, especially with Wordpress and Drupal.

4) Style it! Most of the free CMS's make it easy for you to tailor your website to your own needs without requiring knowledge of tricky CSS or HTML. Don't worry about browser compatibility; just work on getting good content.

5) Sit back and relax. This whole thing will take about 3 days and cost you less than $10 a month, excluding URL.

Hope that helps!

-Dave

[xRyokenx]

Sweet, thanks guys!

[Datech]

I use 000webhost as my free web host. Their paid hosting is a borderline scam, but the free host has kept www.danielvanbeek.com up and running for about 6 months with no problems. I use Drupal for the site, and if you go to the Home drop down menu, and select About This Site, you will get some useful information regarding how I built the site with Drupal.

I've tried doing straight HTML, I've tried site designing with Dreamweaver, I touched the Wordpress pond, and then I dove into Drupal and haven't looked back. It's fun, easy, and full of features. Also, it's free, so what's the issue if you decide you want to try something else?