1y ago

Where to host a personal site

I'm considering creating another personal website, but for more formal things like writing articles and programming updates, as opposed to the usual blog stuff I have on my Neocities site. It'll also have a simpler design, optimised more for reading than having a fun appearance.

Unless the generic domain is particularly nice, I'll buy a domain from Namecheap; but Neocities requires a subscription in order to use a custom domain, so does anyone have any suggestions for cheap or free web hosting that I could use?

13 comments

It sounds like mostly static content, have you looked into GitHub pages already?
- GitHub Pages or Codeberg Pages could be ideal!
  
  They work well! There’s a ton of jekyll themed to use too and they’re usually pretty easy to customize

Namecheap also offers hosting.

I use Bluehost because it's cheap.
the likely only truly free option is to self host
- I would happily self-host, but my Dad will kill me when he notices the electricity bill.

What are your requirements? For static sites I use GitHub pages with GitHub actions to auto build a statically generated react project. Then I use cloudflare for cdn caching. If you're ok with the code being public, the whole setup is free minus the domain name.
- I might go for Codeberg Pages, or join a pubnix/tilde. Really, all I need is a gigabyte or two of space, and the site just needs to be rich text with a bit of CSS to make it palatable to the modern eye. Support for the Gemini protocol would also be nice, but that's not a deal-breaker by any stretch.
  As an advocate of open-source software, I would insist on publishing any source code I write.

You haven't told us much about your skills and requirements. For example, are you thinking static files (either manually or from a generator like Jeykll), or something more dynamic? Are there other things would you want, e.g. database, email, SSH access?
Without knowing that stuff, I'll just note that you can probably use the free tier from various places, e.g. you can do a lot on Cloudflare without spending a penny (and they're a good place to buy domains).
- This would be primarily a static site. I can write decent HTML, and I would ideally either code by hand or use a Markdown -> HTML converter. I will not be using any funky frameworks, as I feel they are unnecessary and will prevent the site from working properly in old and limited browsers (such as Lynx).
  I might like Gemini or Gopher support, but that's not a priority. Git, SFTP, or WebDAV syncing would be handy for editing. Other than that, though, I wouldn't need any other features.
  I hadn't considered Cloudflare, but I'll look into it.
  
  Sorry, I missed your reply.
  If you want to go the converter route, Cloudflare Pages sounds fairly perfect for you. You can have it trigger from commits in GitLab/GitHub and run whichever (Hugo, Jekyll, etc) static site builder you like. The free tier will be plenty for you.
  
  If you might be looking at more general mucking about, Oracle's "always free" tier is pretty good. Yes, you might have to set aside decades of hate for Oracle like I did, but it's not like I'm ever giving them any money.

There’s always doing it yourself unless you have the misfortune of being behind carrier nat. If you’re address is public facing however it only takes a few minutes to set up a web server and dynamic dns.

13 comments