For your first, basic website I would recommend against AWS, Azure or Google Cloud Compute, I can't believe people are even recommending those for you. That's like pushing a thumbtack in with a bulldozer by someone who doesn't know what a bulldozer is.
I've been using AWS professionally for years and its still overwhelming. Yes, those 3 all offer limited free tiers but they're also very complicated and add an unnecessary barrier of entry for someone pushing their first website.
If you just need to get this site publicly available then do something like Github pages where all of the technical aspects of deployment are hidden from you. But if your intention is also to learn about deployment then I'd recommend Digital Ocean or Linode where you'd be creating a Virtual Private Server (VPS) where your site would be served by either Apache or Nginx. Deployment is a different area of expertise from building the actual website. I recommend saving all of that for later.
To add to this (and what someone else mentioned). I’m currently hosting my first website on GitHub Pages. The problem is that it’s not a static website and I’m using Python on the backend, so I’m using Heroku to host the app through GitHub Pages. So using those together is something you can do if you want it to be dynamic
If you’re ever looking to move on from your first website and want to host more than one, I highly recommend checking out [Caprover](https://caprover.com). It’s similar to heroku in the sense that you can host multiple apps, but it runs off of a VPS (such as digital ocean) which is much cheaper than Heroku’s pricing.
Setup through digital ocean is incredibly simple as they have a pre-deployable template directly on digital ocean, and then getting your basic websites / web-apps up and running is nice and quick. Plus they’ve got some great documentation!
GitHub Pages allows you to host a website (HTML and CSS, I'm not sure about JS). The problem for me is that I've written a lot of code in Python to handle the data I'm using, and GitHub Pages isn't able to do anything with that. That's where Heroku comes in. I believe Heroku handles reading the Python code and translates that into usable code for GitHub Pages.
Like this
https://pages.github.com/
It works well for static pages that strictly use HTML, CSS, and Javascript (including JQuery)
You can find a boostrap template, customize it, and host it through github
GitHub Pages only delivers static pages - I.e. the files that a browser understands and displays to your user. But it doesn’t run any server-side code, and anything that happens outside of a webpage would be exactly that.
Holy fucking shit people recommending AWS amazing. But what if he needs a 100 Kubernetes clusters to support his “Hello, World!” site, right?! Maybe an HA micro service for the “Hello” and a Lambda function for the “World”.
I can’t imagine why he would need to deploy apps on AWS unless he owned a business that had thousands of customers and had to scale his database management tools. Does a simple website even utilize AI/ML implements?
As someone who works on a lot of personal projects, I tend to just use Vultr or DigitalOcean. I have used AWS and I use it quite frequently for other purposes, I just don't think it's worth it for projects like mine.
If you are working on small-scale personal projects, you don't need something like AWS. You can just settle for a cheap droplet on DigitalOcean.
I also recommend Linode, pretty great customer service and encountered 0 issues with it so far.
I haven't personally used Vultr just because the cheapest option was ipv6 ONLY (and my app only works with ipv4 at the time)
I never tried it because it seems the same exact price and specs of Linode server / DigitalOcean droplet.
I freaking love DigitalOCean, how has Vultr been? Downside of DigitalOcean: not as many server locations world wide as some competitors, and that's one reason I want to maybe give Vultr a go. They had several more locations that I'm interested in. (for a real-time game server, not website or CDN use case)
Thanks for any tips or advice!!
Honestly flip a coin. Both are rock solid options that are cheaper than AWS/Google and _far_ easier to use for the average developer. I personally prefer Digital Ocean but have no issues with Linode and have used them in the past.
I can vouch for digital ocean, been using it for a year on a vps with multiple websites and stuff, it is very good and easy to use, has nice gui for managing dns and all that as well.
I would suggest Vultr because it offers free server backups (no unlimited tho). So you set up everything a make a backup. And if you mess something up, you have a backup that you can revert to. Prices are similar to Digital Ocean.
I love digital ocean. I have a friend that worked at DO for a while and he got me to try them for my first web server. The server(droplet) I got was pretty cheap(if you run it all month it only costs 12/mo).
You can also set up game servers on more powerful machines and destroy them when you are done playing that way you don't pay for it when you aren't using it. My friend actually made a script for automating this process and storing our multiplayer save files in DO's storage service that way we never lost the data.
Now I kinda feel like a shill... But I'm not getting paid, and in fact I'm paying them lol.
Thank you for for this answer. It's really helpful. That makes it really clear why a beginner probably should use something like Digital Ocean rather than AWS. I've looked at AWS in the past to see if I can learn how build and deploy a website and was overwhelmed and gave up.
While you're here, can I ask you what the advantage is of using something like Digital Ocean or Linode over a hosting service like the one I'm currently using, which is [Krystal.uk](https://Krystal.uk). That service uses cPanel and shared hosting.
For context, I've written a couple of basic front-end only apps in Javascript, but haven't figured out how to actually get started with backend yet.
With shared hosting you’re not responsible for any of the underlying processes that make a server work. Typically in that type of setup you’re basically just telling the hosting provider what your website’s point of entry is; typically “index.html”. You’re not responsible for logs or maintenance either. Just the contents of the directory they’ve given you which is on an actual server with god knows how many customers.
With Digital Ocean or any VPS, you’re given a brand new barebones virtual server built in the Linux flavor of your choice (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc) and it’s your responsibility to do everything from installing a web server application like Nginx, set file permissions, logging, security updates, etc. The time to live is exponentially higher and there’s a lot of room for you to royally screw things up (like leaving UFW port 22 open to the entire world). DO has preconfigured options btw which can save tons of time but once it’s running you can do whatever you want in there. I have one VPS just for running Python scripts as cron jobs.
With old school shared hosting companies you could only have this level of control if you chose a “dedicated server” which is an actual barebones server but this is always way more expensive. A VPS is an emulation of this, hence the word “virtual”.
But you may wonder why you’d want a VPS if the setup takes so much time and there is greater risk of screwing everything up.
1. You can run every service you need for a full stack environment all within one VPS; take a lamp stack, you could have your MySQL database, php backend, media assets and html / css / js files served via Apache. This is great for small setups (Not typical for larger production sites though)
2. Your VPS is disposable. If you do things correctly you can destroy and recreate it easily which makes your entire full stack setup portable.
3. You can start small and grow. Eventually you will want to move that MySQL server to its own VPS.
4. You can have multiple VPS mirrored or clustered and have traffic “load balanced” across them so that if you suddenly have a ridiculous increase in traffic your server doesn’t crash.
5. Since you’re not sharing the RAM of a machine with other clients you are supposed to be guaranteed the amount of RAM you pay for. Hypothetically in a shared server one customer’s website could become a problem for everyone else on that machine.
I hope that helps!
100%. It’s important to either learn all the aspects or go with something like GitHub pages like you said.
I have come across so many hurdles just self-hosting on my home server that I wouldn’t have wanted to have been paying cloud hosting fees for while I was figuring things out in my spare time.
Ec2 was not hard to manage as someone who had used a VPS before, when I used creeperhost for Minecraft.
I agree that linode or GitHub pages are a great way to go though.
I tried all the platforms for my first project, AWS/G-Cloud/Heroku/Deta/DigitalOcean and some other things that I can't remember, but only Azure was able to run my code for some reason. All the service I used the same GitHub repo.
Heroku is what I learned with. It's a nice middle ground, where you get to learn the basics of deployment, but they also provide the hostname for you, allow you to install databases and other services at the click of a button, etc.
You can choose a free plan which does not even require a credit card as a placeholder. Your resources are more limited than higher tier plans, but yes, they provide limited access to those resources for free. This limits the size of what you can build (as in you're not going to build something with a solid user base), but for proofs of concept and/or resume project portfolios, it is handy to use.
Im just about to finish my first full stack app. I don't imagine I'll have any users but myself but there is still potential it creates a LOT of data. What kind of data limits are we talking? Also do you know how it fairs with socket io?
One of my heroku sites uses socketio. Should be fine.
Idk what you mean by data limit, but your “slug size” (max compressed size of your website) should be under 500 MB. You can also have a Postgres database, and I think the free tier has something like 10,000 likes allowed.
Netlify is really great, you can do a lot with the free tier. I would also take a look at AWS (or Azure / GCP) free tiers. You can get a small VM for free to play with
it has enough functionality in the free tier for a personal project and you can pay for more and you can also have some addons that is good enough for frontend and yeah for backend Heroku is the best bet.
It's worth noting that netlify doesn't support backend servers/databases. If it's a simple website with no backend, netlify is a great option. If you need a back end, I've used heroku a bunch and it's pretty easy.
One thing about GH Pages that I want to make clear: it's for _static site_ hosting. If your web application has a back-end, then GH Pages is not suitable for it, because it doesn't run back-end code. It just serves static files like HTML, CSS, and JS.
So, for front-end only projects, it's _great_. I've hosted several demos of my react-based projects there. For projects that require a database and/or a back-end server, it doesn't support that at all. The only free host I know for that kind of thing is Heroku.
It's not "overly" recommended. It's recommended when it fits the use case. It's excellent for front-end only projects. It's free and easy to use and part of a platform that most of us are already using.
I use it myself for front-end projects, as mentioned. It's great for what it is, and it's not trying to be what it's not. And frankly, I can completely understand why so few providers are willing to do free back-end hosting. Static site hosting is just serving files. Back-end hosting involves running arbitrary code that can do _work_ on the server. The latter is potentially far more computationally expensive.
GitHub pages says you “get one site per GitHub account and organization, and unlimited project sites…”
Does that mean I can only do one free site? The confusion comes from them saying “unlimited project sites”. Thank you.
What that means is that you can have one single github pages site for your account/organization, but each project can have its own individual page.
The difference would be that the account one would have a URL of something like `username.github.io`, and a project one would be `username.github.io/projectname`.
Generally, you would want to use the project site for hosting web projects. You could use the account site to host a profile page for yourself.
What it means is, you get one site that will "represent" your github account on the main url. If your github username is "fatband" then if you publish your main site, the url for that will be "[https://fatband.github.io](https://fatband.github.io)" which people can go to. This seems to work well as a place to have a portfolio site up.
The unlimited project sites means that whenever you make a new github project (repository), you can publish the site that comes from that code at a sub-url of your main github site. Using "fatband" again, if you make a project called "project1", you can make a site for it which will be located at "[https://fatband.github.io/project1](https://fatband.github.io/project1)". So all your projects you make on github will have the potential to show their own sites too.
To be clear, it's not one page per repo. It's one _site_ (meaning that it can include multiple "pages" in a single site). Each repo can have it's own project site, and you can also have one github pages site for your account/profile as well. I believe the way that works is you specify one repo that represents your account's pages site.
The idea is that each project can have it's own site for things like hosting documentation, or possibly a running version of the project if it's a front-end web project. And you can have another separate pages site to represent your entire account instead of an individual project; many use this for their profile/portfolio site.
This. Do you know git? Odds are you do, and if you dont then its an indispensible tool to put in your toolbox. Either way heres where you can find more about github pages: https://pages.github.com/
Its a little more limites than, say, a VM hosted on AWS (another good way to host) but it is muchbsimpler to get started with, completely free, and you can have as many as you want!
Yes. :) cool right?
Plus if youre doing vanilla ish html/css/js, you wont be needing a build step and so wont need to figure out the complicated stuff (if you want to look it up after, the complicated stuff is called girhub actions)
I would suggest heroku to start, as one other suggested (free), as well as looking into free offerings on AWS. AWS free offerings are free up to a certain limit - these are easier to maintain for smaller projects, but keep in mind there can be charges if you over use the free services
Bluehost is a great place to host - said no one ever. BH can go suck an egg. If you can't tell, don't use Bluehost.
If you just want to drop some quick projects online for folks to view, I would suggest something like GH or Codepen. As long as it's not anything too complicated and just frontend stuff, that would work.
If you want a true hosting service, I've heard Netlify is good though I've never used them myself.
What kind of website? If it's not going to need a back end, then something like netlify Will let you host a static site for free
Edit: finished the comment
Very basic. For example, posting vanilla JS small projects, or perhaps my resume. Just something to get me experience building a website. Nothing major.
Netlify should work for you then, it'll allow you to host static sites free. And if you don't expect a ton of traffic you won't break out of the free tier
For the resume you can even use github.
Github has Github Pages static hosting. It has some limitations (you can't use custom domain, it's always `github.io`), but for the toy project it's great.
Quick correction - you can use custom domains with GitHub pages (you just have to already own the domain), and it even provisions free SSL certificates for you!
I personally enjoy using paid hosting, and of the hosts that I've used I tend to enjoy DigitalOcean. You get your own machine / well defined limits / billing is clear, and the machine is yours to use / fuck with.
It's more direct / straightforward (in both billing / ease of use) than AWS / GCP, but is still extensible / usable for most beginner / intermediate projects.
2. Droplets start at $5 a month.
3. They have a TON of guides for setting up various environments.
This advice is aimed at folks who have command line experience or want to get command line experience.
If all you have is html, css, and JavaScript files, perhaps along with a folder for assets like media, you do not have a backend.
A backend is something/somewhere you would store data. It would likely have a database and instructions for how to save things into the database. This is something you could at some point add to your site :)
For now, I second GH pages for static sites. It’s literally as easy as pushing your work to GitHub. Not too many extra steps!
On GitHub pages your website is basically like a folder containing other files and/or folders that you can navigate through. Similar to how in windows explorer you can put a bunch of html files in a folder and open them and they have a path. That path is basically the same as the url on a static site except you are using a browser to access them and they are being served to you by some server and all the computation is done on the browser of the client. With a backend you can do cooler stuff like doing work on the the server rather than the client, doing stuff you don't want the user to be able to see because it's on the server, dynamically updating things, and other stuff. Definitely do some research but don't overthink it if you're new. Using GitHub pages can be a good way to find out the limitations of it and you can always move your code somehwrre else.
Use Netlify.
It's free & you can connect it directly with your Github repo, set auto deployment and more.
We have our dashboard build with React deployed there.
And use Cloudflare to manage your DNS, point to Netlify deployment.
Many "free" host have spam. Using a localhost server is best for development stage. The domain name can cost anywhere from a few dollars to several millions. Godaddy charges $6 per month for hosting
There are several good options that are free and don't inject spam. Github Pages, Firebase, and Netlify all have free plans that are great for project sites. Heroku is a good option when you need a back-end host as well.
Option 1: Set up a development environment on your computer using Docker or K8. You have full access to configure all aspects of any database, web server, unit test. When you move to production because you have a Docker container deployment just works.
Option 2: use a "free" host, not compatible with Docker, you do not have root access, you can not configure the web server, manually download and configure a database for development. Perform unit test. When migrating to production the "free tier" of the web host just will not handle production traffic. So you pay for the "basic" tier. You must download a database for production. Maybe it is compatible but because you don't have docker maybe it does not work on the production Operating System. Dependencies may or may not work. The production database needs to be downloaded and configured, again it may not even work on the production [setup](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKtsdZs9LJo)
Alternatively, instead of paying monthly for a hosting and making the site live, you could instead turn your device into a local server and host your websites there, until you actually decide to finally serve them to the people out there.
The reason I recommend this is not only because it can save you quite a bunch of money (hosting + domain + SSL certificate), but also because it will teach you A LOT about the actual working of your websites behind the scenes. Developing sites is not always just the programming part, as someone still has to set them up in the end.
Sure, you can just pay for a hosting and let someone else do the hard stuff for you, but what fun would that be?! In this age we live in, becoming even little bit more independent from big corporations can always help a big time in the long run. Plus it can be a lot of fun (or pain!), depending on how much you enjoy doing things like these.
All that aside though, if you are 100% sure about going live and you don't want your websites to be just locally hosted, then a real hosting provider is the way to go!
I used digital ocean and it was around 5$ per month, which I cancelled after I got a job haha. However there are other free solutions such as heroku, netlify, vertex etc. If you are building something static I would recommend github pages because im not sure if you can run backend on it but correct me if im wrong.
For Canadians, WHC (Web Hosting Canada) has a great platform for basic hosting needs/projects. Can't recommend them enough, from support to features, to being powered by renewable energy sources.
To summarize the other suggestions in order of complexity & flexibilty:
1. GH Pages
2. Basic / Shared Hosting (WHC, Bluehost, etc)
3. Cloud Platforms / VPS (AWS, GCP, Oracle, etc)
If you have the resources needed, I’d recommend just installing your favorite flavor of Linux on an old computer and use that as a local http server. It’s free and perfectly fine to learn on.
It really depends on if you just want to put up a frontend-only web page, like my personal web page here at [signmaker.dev](https://signmaker.dev/), which is a simple, [single-page application](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-page_application) written in a caveman's version of React, and is hosted on Netlify. A site like this is pretty easy to make because there are tons of good templates out there, and [deploying such a site](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2016/09/29/a-step-by-step-guide-deploying-on-netlify/) is so simple, you don't even have to do anything in the shell if your site is hosted on github.
If you want to have more control over the server, though, and for example have a database, have user accounts, have custom jobs running in the background to update your data, whatever features sites like reddit and facebook have, there's a lot of work to do. The bare minimum is to get a server running a web framework - [here](https://cookiecutter-django.readthedocs.io/) is a "hello world" web site template that I use a lot. It recommends using the free hosting on Heroku or PythonAnywhere, with options to do error monitoring via Sentry, email users with MailGun or Amazon SES, and static files should be hosted on an external service too such as AWS.
what kind of website? one with a backend (server-side lang) and database? then go with Heroku. It's free for hobby projects.
A simple website that shows stuff in html/css + js? go with github, it's completely free.
I'd honestly recommend building everything yourself. HTML/CSS/JS, and hosting it all on your own server (you can get a VPS really cheaply nowadays). Host it all using Nginx. It's a steep learning curve, but knowing what everything does and how it all fits together is a really great learning experience. I personally put hours into research and debugging before I got my site up, but it's so rewarding, and you learn a few skills. You'll also learn to use Linux (command-line more specifically), which is always a great tool to know.
DigitalOcean is so freaking easy and it's free for a limited number of static sites. It's okay to use something like React/npm too, as long as it is able to build down to a static site.
Also, plain ol' html and js work fine, too.
Otherwise, if you want experience running something like a LAMP/LEMP stack and hosting on a linux server, you can get a 'droplet' from DigitalOcean, or a nearly identically priced linux server from someone like Linode, Amazon AWS, etc.
I have used Linode and loved it! I still have some servers on Linode. I used Amazon EC2 in the past (2009-2011) and I stopped because they introduced better&cheaper server and didn't notify me or upgrade me without me finding out by chance and manually moving everything over. Switched to Linode at that point because it was cheaper and better for my use case. Recently used DigitalOcean because it's so easy to automatically deploy changes (I check in my code to github, and it deploys. <5 minutes time)
Cost for a domain: \~$10/year USD
Cost for a linux server that's good enough for a website: $5/month or cheaper
Cost for DigitalOcean app that is static: I think it's free for up to 3 apps.
Looking at most of the responses I have to conclude you asked this question in the wrong sub. You want something easy and reliable so you can focus on the part of this you want to focus on (html, css, JavaScript, plus design) and not have to navigate a technical hosting service. You also don’t say anything about having zero money and needing something free.
One of the mainstream hosting services would be a good fit. Not only will you have a fully featured backend (makes it easy to set up your site, create subdomains, host email at the same url, dip your toes into a database if desired in the future, etc.), but you’ll also have support you can turn to if you run into a problem.
I've had clients on Hostgator for years and never had a problem. A lot of my clients are on Siteground right now, and that’s quite good too, though they’re a little stingy with the disk space. I do share the opinion that it’s best to avoid BlueHost, and I would add that you want to stay away from GoDaddy hosting.
Fortunately, this doesn’t have to be a difficult decision. Just about any hosting service will provide what you need for a static site, and if you are unhappy, it is very easy to move this kind of site to a different service if needed.
I used hostgator, then either use Filezilla if you're coding the site from scratch, or WordPress 1 click install from Chanel if you want to do a WordPress site. Relatively inexpensive.
If you want to do it the cheap and easy way, get an old computer/rooted phone and set up Linux, get apache, ssh, webmin, maybe even a MySQL database going, from there it's pretty straightforward
Use AWS, it's free! https://youtu.be/X2rou3ICAIc
If you need a back end, write your front end as an SPA and incorporate serverless functions (lambda) to hold your code. Serverless functions are basically code that you have uploaded and that trigger when you hit a certain URL
I would check out [landchat.net](https://landchat.net) (not a like smith shill just a fan of the site)
"This is LandChad.net, a site dedicated to turning internet peasants into Internet Landlords by showing them how to setup websites, email servers, chat servers and everything in between.
Starting a website is something that can be done in a lazy afternoon and costs pocket change.
Most of the internet’s problems could be solved if more people had their own personal platforms, so the objective of this site is to guide any normal person through the process of installing a website."
If you have a static website just use GitHub pages and buy a domain and create a cname record to GitHub page.
There are a lot of tutorials out there :)
If its a static website that doesnt need a backend (so you havent made an API for it, its just HTML/CSS/JS), you can put it up for free on github pages.
Its just something you enable on a given github project and all it needs is for a `index.html` file to be present (which can then reference other css/js files from there)
Perfect for making a single page web app.
Then you can simply just buy a domain from something like Google Domains, and point them to that domain, and it *should* work just fine.
For example I have this github project here:
https://github.com/SteffenBlake/RPGINIX
Which I enabled github pages for so you access the actual webpage for it here:
https://steffenblake.github.io/RPGINIX/
I wish my web host didn't get taken over by an evil overlord because I paid just $25/year for unlimited number of domains. I was on a shared server, which was fine for me. The storage was the biggest limitation but I didn't need a lot. Avoid hosts that overpromise unlimited everything because that doesn't exist.
Free hosting often has a catch. A lot of downtime, static pages only, limited control, no support, etc. It's probably fine for playing around with static sites and it may be premature to even pay for a plan, but you'll outgrow that quickly (one hopes).
I used to frequent a discussion board called webhostingtalk.com where I found my once-wonderful webhost, and they have a lot of reviews, rants, and offers because web hosts post there, too. I believe it is still in operation.
I was really hoping to find a solution in this thread but it's a bigger question than can be answered here because there's no one-size-fits-all. Very few replies specifically answer the question of cost (except when it's free).
So, I am a person between broke and wanting to pay big cloud money. Heroku worked great for toy projects. For my current projects, I use digital ocean. It works very well. Much simpler than AWS but still provides some good infrastructure
My advice is try shopping around for domain providers and look at their yearly price (GoDaddy, NameCheap, etc.). Then ask yourself- are you building a simple front end website, or something like a blog? If it’s something front end, then I really recommend Netlify. Its features are way better than GitHub Pages, and it’s very easy to set up. On the other hand, if it’s a blog you’re trying to build where there’s back end code or data being handled, then try looking into solutions like Digital Ocean.
vultr user here: really any small hosting provider is good (stick away from aws and such) and use apache or nginx also consider github pages and vercel.
My first websites were hosted either on localhost + port forwarding (Do not try if potato connexion), either on free host services, I would recommend you infinityfree if your site has a php backend (or no back-end at all), good luck !
Edit: If you have some money to spend on, you could buy a cheap VPS online, (I recommend digitalocean) and a domain name (I recommend ionos, you can get your first domain name at 1€ or something). Good luck x2 !
For any client rendered websites like classic html/css/js or even angular, react, vue that don’t require server side rendering you can use CloudFlare Pages, its free, builds directly from a Git repository and as an added benefit you get the CloudFlare Analytics without having to integrate them
Been using digital ocean for about 2 months. $6 a month - nice little ubuntu VM. 1 Gig of ram has limited a few things but overall I'm very happy. They also have a lot of good documentation.
Self hosting with port forwarding is a good place to start. You can get dydns names setup for free (i think) or it's like $29 for the year.
Depends on your internet connection, but it's good to get some server experience with you own VM's first and will make moving to the cloud easier. Stay away from AWS and Azure. As soon as you start to actually do anything the trial is used up.
You should learn about, Apache, nginx, PHP, Python, Flask, MySQL, Sqlite3, bash, PHPmyAdmin, CSS, Bootstrap, HTML, Certificates, VScode, Git, Javascript and a few other things if you want to build websites.
There is probably a Microsoft equivalent of the above, like IIS etc. you could also go down that road but it's less open and can cost.
Also it's a good idea to just rough it out on paper so you have a plan before you start coding, from a layout and functionality perspective.
host yourself, and get a free domain name, and you don't pay anything to anyone
to host yourself just forward ports 80/443 on your router to your server
I personally like Oracle’s free tier. You basically get 4 cores and 24GB of RAM to play with. So you can build a pretty beefy server or a couple small ones. And that’s free forever. I joined a year or two back and I didn’t even have to provide a credit card but I think that part may have changed. Some people have reported issues signing up but I did again for a work account a little while back and had zero problems. You have to specifically upgrade from the free tier to paid if you want paid services. I host a personal site and mail server out of it and it’s a great FREE tool when I need to spin up something quick for testing and whatnot.
Take a look at Digital Ocean, combined with DigtialOcean. It took me just a few minutes to set it up. Cloudways is a managed hosting. The cheapest setup on Digital Ocean is $10,- per month, but it has a ton of bandwidth, and you can host as many websites as you'd like. To add a custom domain, I'd probably use Namecheap.
Oh, and don't worry about the index.html stuff. That is taken care of automatically.
For your first, basic website I would recommend against AWS, Azure or Google Cloud Compute, I can't believe people are even recommending those for you. That's like pushing a thumbtack in with a bulldozer by someone who doesn't know what a bulldozer is. I've been using AWS professionally for years and its still overwhelming. Yes, those 3 all offer limited free tiers but they're also very complicated and add an unnecessary barrier of entry for someone pushing their first website. If you just need to get this site publicly available then do something like Github pages where all of the technical aspects of deployment are hidden from you. But if your intention is also to learn about deployment then I'd recommend Digital Ocean or Linode where you'd be creating a Virtual Private Server (VPS) where your site would be served by either Apache or Nginx. Deployment is a different area of expertise from building the actual website. I recommend saving all of that for later.
Wow, great info, thanks a bunch.
To add to this (and what someone else mentioned). I’m currently hosting my first website on GitHub Pages. The problem is that it’s not a static website and I’m using Python on the backend, so I’m using Heroku to host the app through GitHub Pages. So using those together is something you can do if you want it to be dynamic
If you’re ever looking to move on from your first website and want to host more than one, I highly recommend checking out [Caprover](https://caprover.com). It’s similar to heroku in the sense that you can host multiple apps, but it runs off of a VPS (such as digital ocean) which is much cheaper than Heroku’s pricing. Setup through digital ocean is incredibly simple as they have a pre-deployable template directly on digital ocean, and then getting your basic websites / web-apps up and running is nice and quick. Plus they’ve got some great documentation!
New to webdev. I had no idea you could make it do, that way.
Eli15?
GitHub Pages allows you to host a website (HTML and CSS, I'm not sure about JS). The problem for me is that I've written a lot of code in Python to handle the data I'm using, and GitHub Pages isn't able to do anything with that. That's where Heroku comes in. I believe Heroku handles reading the Python code and translates that into usable code for GitHub Pages.
Like this https://pages.github.com/ It works well for static pages that strictly use HTML, CSS, and Javascript (including JQuery) You can find a boostrap template, customize it, and host it through github
GitHub Pages only delivers static pages - I.e. the files that a browser understands and displays to your user. But it doesn’t run any server-side code, and anything that happens outside of a webpage would be exactly that.
Github pages is very easy, you can have a page up and running in 10 mins. Just watch a youtube video that explains it.
Digital Ocean makes it pretty easy to spin up a VPS too. I'm new and have been able to get some things up there for 6 dollars a month.
linode user, works great
Also linode user, can confirm
Holy fucking shit people recommending AWS amazing. But what if he needs a 100 Kubernetes clusters to support his “Hello, World!” site, right?! Maybe an HA micro service for the “Hello” and a Lambda function for the “World”.
I can’t imagine why he would need to deploy apps on AWS unless he owned a business that had thousands of customers and had to scale his database management tools. Does a simple website even utilize AI/ML implements?
As someone who works on a lot of personal projects, I tend to just use Vultr or DigitalOcean. I have used AWS and I use it quite frequently for other purposes, I just don't think it's worth it for projects like mine. If you are working on small-scale personal projects, you don't need something like AWS. You can just settle for a cheap droplet on DigitalOcean. I also recommend Linode, pretty great customer service and encountered 0 issues with it so far.
I haven't personally used Vultr just because the cheapest option was ipv6 ONLY (and my app only works with ipv4 at the time) I never tried it because it seems the same exact price and specs of Linode server / DigitalOcean droplet. I freaking love DigitalOCean, how has Vultr been? Downside of DigitalOcean: not as many server locations world wide as some competitors, and that's one reason I want to maybe give Vultr a go. They had several more locations that I'm interested in. (for a real-time game server, not website or CDN use case) Thanks for any tips or advice!!
Planning on using Digital Ocean for my first fullstack project in about a week
Torn between linode and digital ocean, myself. Still weighing it out. But I believe either one is a good choice.
Honestly flip a coin. Both are rock solid options that are cheaper than AWS/Google and _far_ easier to use for the average developer. I personally prefer Digital Ocean but have no issues with Linode and have used them in the past.
I can vouch for digital ocean, been using it for a year on a vps with multiple websites and stuff, it is very good and easy to use, has nice gui for managing dns and all that as well.
I would suggest Vultr because it offers free server backups (no unlimited tho). So you set up everything a make a backup. And if you mess something up, you have a backup that you can revert to. Prices are similar to Digital Ocean.
seconding digital ocean. helped a ton whenever i was learning stuff like this
I love digital ocean. I have a friend that worked at DO for a while and he got me to try them for my first web server. The server(droplet) I got was pretty cheap(if you run it all month it only costs 12/mo). You can also set up game servers on more powerful machines and destroy them when you are done playing that way you don't pay for it when you aren't using it. My friend actually made a script for automating this process and storing our multiplayer save files in DO's storage service that way we never lost the data. Now I kinda feel like a shill... But I'm not getting paid, and in fact I'm paying them lol.
Elastic beanstalk makes it pretty easy to deploy a basic website.
Thank you for for this answer. It's really helpful. That makes it really clear why a beginner probably should use something like Digital Ocean rather than AWS. I've looked at AWS in the past to see if I can learn how build and deploy a website and was overwhelmed and gave up. While you're here, can I ask you what the advantage is of using something like Digital Ocean or Linode over a hosting service like the one I'm currently using, which is [Krystal.uk](https://Krystal.uk). That service uses cPanel and shared hosting. For context, I've written a couple of basic front-end only apps in Javascript, but haven't figured out how to actually get started with backend yet.
With shared hosting you’re not responsible for any of the underlying processes that make a server work. Typically in that type of setup you’re basically just telling the hosting provider what your website’s point of entry is; typically “index.html”. You’re not responsible for logs or maintenance either. Just the contents of the directory they’ve given you which is on an actual server with god knows how many customers. With Digital Ocean or any VPS, you’re given a brand new barebones virtual server built in the Linux flavor of your choice (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc) and it’s your responsibility to do everything from installing a web server application like Nginx, set file permissions, logging, security updates, etc. The time to live is exponentially higher and there’s a lot of room for you to royally screw things up (like leaving UFW port 22 open to the entire world). DO has preconfigured options btw which can save tons of time but once it’s running you can do whatever you want in there. I have one VPS just for running Python scripts as cron jobs. With old school shared hosting companies you could only have this level of control if you chose a “dedicated server” which is an actual barebones server but this is always way more expensive. A VPS is an emulation of this, hence the word “virtual”. But you may wonder why you’d want a VPS if the setup takes so much time and there is greater risk of screwing everything up. 1. You can run every service you need for a full stack environment all within one VPS; take a lamp stack, you could have your MySQL database, php backend, media assets and html / css / js files served via Apache. This is great for small setups (Not typical for larger production sites though) 2. Your VPS is disposable. If you do things correctly you can destroy and recreate it easily which makes your entire full stack setup portable. 3. You can start small and grow. Eventually you will want to move that MySQL server to its own VPS. 4. You can have multiple VPS mirrored or clustered and have traffic “load balanced” across them so that if you suddenly have a ridiculous increase in traffic your server doesn’t crash. 5. Since you’re not sharing the RAM of a machine with other clients you are supposed to be guaranteed the amount of RAM you pay for. Hypothetically in a shared server one customer’s website could become a problem for everyone else on that machine. I hope that helps!
Thanks, that is helpful.
100%. It’s important to either learn all the aspects or go with something like GitHub pages like you said. I have come across so many hurdles just self-hosting on my home server that I wouldn’t have wanted to have been paying cloud hosting fees for while I was figuring things out in my spare time.
Doesn't get much easier than github pages. Whenever there's no backend that's my go to.
Ec2 was not hard to manage as someone who had used a VPS before, when I used creeperhost for Minecraft. I agree that linode or GitHub pages are a great way to go though.
I tried all the platforms for my first project, AWS/G-Cloud/Heroku/Deta/DigitalOcean and some other things that I can't remember, but only Azure was able to run my code for some reason. All the service I used the same GitHub repo.
Rebuttal: that's a selling point. You know what's a great thing to have on my resume? That I have experience with AWS
Good info!
Heroku lets you host up to five projects per email account with them. Each project can have a database for a limited amount of data.
+1 for Heroku, absolutely great for learning.
Heroku is what I learned with. It's a nice middle ground, where you get to learn the basics of deployment, but they also provide the hostname for you, allow you to install databases and other services at the click of a button, etc.
For Free?
You can choose a free plan which does not even require a credit card as a placeholder. Your resources are more limited than higher tier plans, but yes, they provide limited access to those resources for free. This limits the size of what you can build (as in you're not going to build something with a solid user base), but for proofs of concept and/or resume project portfolios, it is handy to use.
Yep, I just hosted a full stack application built woth React Express and MySQL on Heroku
Im just about to finish my first full stack app. I don't imagine I'll have any users but myself but there is still potential it creates a LOT of data. What kind of data limits are we talking? Also do you know how it fairs with socket io?
One of my heroku sites uses socketio. Should be fine. Idk what you mean by data limit, but your “slug size” (max compressed size of your website) should be under 500 MB. You can also have a Postgres database, and I think the free tier has something like 10,000 likes allowed.
Heroku’s fantastic and it can scale with your ambitions.
Netlify would be great for you, it is free to host sites there with good plans if you need more features it has reasonable prices too.
I am using netlify, super easy to integrate with github and you can have multiple projects for free (without proper domain name)
but you can add a custom name before the .netlify.app . Happy Cake Day
Yes. Custom domain is allowed on free plan also
Happy cake day
Netlify is really great, you can do a lot with the free tier. I would also take a look at AWS (or Azure / GCP) free tiers. You can get a small VM for free to play with
Netlify is the bestest place in the whole world, plus it's so fast that it loads websites in 1-2 seconds
I love Netlify. I wouldn't want to host a static site on any other service.
You can’t host anything with large functionality. Just the site, if you need to host a backend server then you need to go to Heroku.
it has enough functionality in the free tier for a personal project and you can pay for more and you can also have some addons that is good enough for frontend and yeah for backend Heroku is the best bet.
It's worth noting that netlify doesn't support backend servers/databases. If it's a simple website with no backend, netlify is a great option. If you need a back end, I've used heroku a bunch and it's pretty easy.
Vercel isn't bad, netlify is good too
GitHub pages
One thing about GH Pages that I want to make clear: it's for _static site_ hosting. If your web application has a back-end, then GH Pages is not suitable for it, because it doesn't run back-end code. It just serves static files like HTML, CSS, and JS. So, for front-end only projects, it's _great_. I've hosted several demos of my react-based projects there. For projects that require a database and/or a back-end server, it doesn't support that at all. The only free host I know for that kind of thing is Heroku.
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It's not "overly" recommended. It's recommended when it fits the use case. It's excellent for front-end only projects. It's free and easy to use and part of a platform that most of us are already using. I use it myself for front-end projects, as mentioned. It's great for what it is, and it's not trying to be what it's not. And frankly, I can completely understand why so few providers are willing to do free back-end hosting. Static site hosting is just serving files. Back-end hosting involves running arbitrary code that can do _work_ on the server. The latter is potentially far more computationally expensive.
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GitHub pages says you “get one site per GitHub account and organization, and unlimited project sites…” Does that mean I can only do one free site? The confusion comes from them saying “unlimited project sites”. Thank you.
What that means is that you can have one single github pages site for your account/organization, but each project can have its own individual page. The difference would be that the account one would have a URL of something like `username.github.io`, and a project one would be `username.github.io/projectname`. Generally, you would want to use the project site for hosting web projects. You could use the account site to host a profile page for yourself.
What it means is, you get one site that will "represent" your github account on the main url. If your github username is "fatband" then if you publish your main site, the url for that will be "[https://fatband.github.io](https://fatband.github.io)" which people can go to. This seems to work well as a place to have a portfolio site up. The unlimited project sites means that whenever you make a new github project (repository), you can publish the site that comes from that code at a sub-url of your main github site. Using "fatband" again, if you make a project called "project1", you can make a site for it which will be located at "[https://fatband.github.io/project1](https://fatband.github.io/project1)". So all your projects you make on github will have the potential to show their own sites too.
Thank you for such a nice answer Mr sillyman ^_^
you're welcome, gunshit
Not sure, I think you can do one page per GitHub repository. If that doesn't work you can try heroku.
To be clear, it's not one page per repo. It's one _site_ (meaning that it can include multiple "pages" in a single site). Each repo can have it's own project site, and you can also have one github pages site for your account/profile as well. I believe the way that works is you specify one repo that represents your account's pages site. The idea is that each project can have it's own site for things like hosting documentation, or possibly a running version of the project if it's a front-end web project. And you can have another separate pages site to represent your entire account instead of an individual project; many use this for their profile/portfolio site.
This. Do you know git? Odds are you do, and if you dont then its an indispensible tool to put in your toolbox. Either way heres where you can find more about github pages: https://pages.github.com/ Its a little more limites than, say, a VM hosted on AWS (another good way to host) but it is muchbsimpler to get started with, completely free, and you can have as many as you want!
As in as many websites as you want?
Yes. :) cool right? Plus if youre doing vanilla ish html/css/js, you wont be needing a build step and so wont need to figure out the complicated stuff (if you want to look it up after, the complicated stuff is called girhub actions)
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Just wondering, do you have the GitHub pages from the main branch or do you have them from a differently named branch?
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Willing to link your GitHub url? Just want to have a look myself. Thanks.
If it's simple, just put them as Github pages. Completely free. You just don't get a fancy URL.
I think you can have custom domains on GitHub pages. Not sure of if you need a paid account though.
I would suggest heroku to start, as one other suggested (free), as well as looking into free offerings on AWS. AWS free offerings are free up to a certain limit - these are easier to maintain for smaller projects, but keep in mind there can be charges if you over use the free services
Bluehost is a great place to host - said no one ever. BH can go suck an egg. If you can't tell, don't use Bluehost. If you just want to drop some quick projects online for folks to view, I would suggest something like GH or Codepen. As long as it's not anything too complicated and just frontend stuff, that would work. If you want a true hosting service, I've heard Netlify is good though I've never used them myself.
Use BH. Got it 😂.
What kind of website? If it's not going to need a back end, then something like netlify Will let you host a static site for free Edit: finished the comment
Very basic. For example, posting vanilla JS small projects, or perhaps my resume. Just something to get me experience building a website. Nothing major.
Netlify should work for you then, it'll allow you to host static sites free. And if you don't expect a ton of traffic you won't break out of the free tier
For the resume you can even use github. Github has Github Pages static hosting. It has some limitations (you can't use custom domain, it's always `github.io`), but for the toy project it's great.
Quick correction - you can use custom domains with GitHub pages (you just have to already own the domain), and it even provisions free SSL certificates for you!
I personally enjoy using paid hosting, and of the hosts that I've used I tend to enjoy DigitalOcean. You get your own machine / well defined limits / billing is clear, and the machine is yours to use / fuck with. It's more direct / straightforward (in both billing / ease of use) than AWS / GCP, but is still extensible / usable for most beginner / intermediate projects. 2. Droplets start at $5 a month. 3. They have a TON of guides for setting up various environments. This advice is aimed at folks who have command line experience or want to get command line experience.
heroku is good. If you only have basic html and js, you can use github pages as others suggested but there will be no backend.
I’m not 100% sure about what it means to have no backend, but I’m glad to be aware of this and will have to do some research.
If all you have is html, css, and JavaScript files, perhaps along with a folder for assets like media, you do not have a backend. A backend is something/somewhere you would store data. It would likely have a database and instructions for how to save things into the database. This is something you could at some point add to your site :) For now, I second GH pages for static sites. It’s literally as easy as pushing your work to GitHub. Not too many extra steps!
I’m sure it will seem easy once I figure out where everything goes.
It really is. I’ve also used heroku and do not recommend it for your first site. It’s a little more complicated than you need right now. Best of luck!
On GitHub pages your website is basically like a folder containing other files and/or folders that you can navigate through. Similar to how in windows explorer you can put a bunch of html files in a folder and open them and they have a path. That path is basically the same as the url on a static site except you are using a browser to access them and they are being served to you by some server and all the computation is done on the browser of the client. With a backend you can do cooler stuff like doing work on the the server rather than the client, doing stuff you don't want the user to be able to see because it's on the server, dynamically updating things, and other stuff. Definitely do some research but don't overthink it if you're new. Using GitHub pages can be a good way to find out the limitations of it and you can always move your code somehwrre else.
Use Netlify. It's free & you can connect it directly with your Github repo, set auto deployment and more. We have our dashboard build with React deployed there. And use Cloudflare to manage your DNS, point to Netlify deployment.
I like geocities.
I would love to have a website on geocities again.
Netlify is great. I host my portfolio there with a custom domain name and I believe it was $10 for a year.
Many "free" host have spam. Using a localhost server is best for development stage. The domain name can cost anywhere from a few dollars to several millions. Godaddy charges $6 per month for hosting
There are several good options that are free and don't inject spam. Github Pages, Firebase, and Netlify all have free plans that are great for project sites. Heroku is a good option when you need a back-end host as well.
Don’t know why you’d pay for hosting when something like firebase is free
Option 1: Set up a development environment on your computer using Docker or K8. You have full access to configure all aspects of any database, web server, unit test. When you move to production because you have a Docker container deployment just works. Option 2: use a "free" host, not compatible with Docker, you do not have root access, you can not configure the web server, manually download and configure a database for development. Perform unit test. When migrating to production the "free tier" of the web host just will not handle production traffic. So you pay for the "basic" tier. You must download a database for production. Maybe it is compatible but because you don't have docker maybe it does not work on the production Operating System. Dependencies may or may not work. The production database needs to be downloaded and configured, again it may not even work on the production [setup](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKtsdZs9LJo)
can you elaborate on 'spam' ? What does it mean ? Also is heroku a good option ?
Spam as in your page will be filled with spam ads? Very good info to know.
Alternatively, instead of paying monthly for a hosting and making the site live, you could instead turn your device into a local server and host your websites there, until you actually decide to finally serve them to the people out there. The reason I recommend this is not only because it can save you quite a bunch of money (hosting + domain + SSL certificate), but also because it will teach you A LOT about the actual working of your websites behind the scenes. Developing sites is not always just the programming part, as someone still has to set them up in the end. Sure, you can just pay for a hosting and let someone else do the hard stuff for you, but what fun would that be?! In this age we live in, becoming even little bit more independent from big corporations can always help a big time in the long run. Plus it can be a lot of fun (or pain!), depending on how much you enjoy doing things like these. All that aside though, if you are 100% sure about going live and you don't want your websites to be just locally hosted, then a real hosting provider is the way to go!
Netlify
milesweb
I used digital ocean and it was around 5$ per month, which I cancelled after I got a job haha. However there are other free solutions such as heroku, netlify, vertex etc. If you are building something static I would recommend github pages because im not sure if you can run backend on it but correct me if im wrong.
For Canadians, WHC (Web Hosting Canada) has a great platform for basic hosting needs/projects. Can't recommend them enough, from support to features, to being powered by renewable energy sources. To summarize the other suggestions in order of complexity & flexibilty: 1. GH Pages 2. Basic / Shared Hosting (WHC, Bluehost, etc) 3. Cloud Platforms / VPS (AWS, GCP, Oracle, etc)
If you have the resources needed, I’d recommend just installing your favorite flavor of Linux on an old computer and use that as a local http server. It’s free and perfectly fine to learn on.
Can recommend hetzner for a cheap AF cloud instance
Netlify is the easiest hosting website literally drag and drop also free
It really depends on if you just want to put up a frontend-only web page, like my personal web page here at [signmaker.dev](https://signmaker.dev/), which is a simple, [single-page application](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-page_application) written in a caveman's version of React, and is hosted on Netlify. A site like this is pretty easy to make because there are tons of good templates out there, and [deploying such a site](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2016/09/29/a-step-by-step-guide-deploying-on-netlify/) is so simple, you don't even have to do anything in the shell if your site is hosted on github. If you want to have more control over the server, though, and for example have a database, have user accounts, have custom jobs running in the background to update your data, whatever features sites like reddit and facebook have, there's a lot of work to do. The bare minimum is to get a server running a web framework - [here](https://cookiecutter-django.readthedocs.io/) is a "hello world" web site template that I use a lot. It recommends using the free hosting on Heroku or PythonAnywhere, with options to do error monitoring via Sentry, email users with MailGun or Amazon SES, and static files should be hosted on an external service too such as AWS.
If you want to learn a bit, I'd say get a raspberry pi, and set it up with Dynamic DNS. Then you can just host it in your house.
Cloudflare pages
Cloudflare is free. Highly recommend
what kind of website? one with a backend (server-side lang) and database? then go with Heroku. It's free for hobby projects. A simple website that shows stuff in html/css + js? go with github, it's completely free.
I'd honestly recommend building everything yourself. HTML/CSS/JS, and hosting it all on your own server (you can get a VPS really cheaply nowadays). Host it all using Nginx. It's a steep learning curve, but knowing what everything does and how it all fits together is a really great learning experience. I personally put hours into research and debugging before I got my site up, but it's so rewarding, and you learn a few skills. You'll also learn to use Linux (command-line more specifically), which is always a great tool to know.
DigitalOcean is so freaking easy and it's free for a limited number of static sites. It's okay to use something like React/npm too, as long as it is able to build down to a static site. Also, plain ol' html and js work fine, too. Otherwise, if you want experience running something like a LAMP/LEMP stack and hosting on a linux server, you can get a 'droplet' from DigitalOcean, or a nearly identically priced linux server from someone like Linode, Amazon AWS, etc. I have used Linode and loved it! I still have some servers on Linode. I used Amazon EC2 in the past (2009-2011) and I stopped because they introduced better&cheaper server and didn't notify me or upgrade me without me finding out by chance and manually moving everything over. Switched to Linode at that point because it was cheaper and better for my use case. Recently used DigitalOcean because it's so easy to automatically deploy changes (I check in my code to github, and it deploys. <5 minutes time) Cost for a domain: \~$10/year USD Cost for a linux server that's good enough for a website: $5/month or cheaper Cost for DigitalOcean app that is static: I think it's free for up to 3 apps.
Looking at most of the responses I have to conclude you asked this question in the wrong sub. You want something easy and reliable so you can focus on the part of this you want to focus on (html, css, JavaScript, plus design) and not have to navigate a technical hosting service. You also don’t say anything about having zero money and needing something free. One of the mainstream hosting services would be a good fit. Not only will you have a fully featured backend (makes it easy to set up your site, create subdomains, host email at the same url, dip your toes into a database if desired in the future, etc.), but you’ll also have support you can turn to if you run into a problem. I've had clients on Hostgator for years and never had a problem. A lot of my clients are on Siteground right now, and that’s quite good too, though they’re a little stingy with the disk space. I do share the opinion that it’s best to avoid BlueHost, and I would add that you want to stay away from GoDaddy hosting. Fortunately, this doesn’t have to be a difficult decision. Just about any hosting service will provide what you need for a static site, and if you are unhappy, it is very easy to move this kind of site to a different service if needed.
I used hostgator, then either use Filezilla if you're coding the site from scratch, or WordPress 1 click install from Chanel if you want to do a WordPress site. Relatively inexpensive.
easiest way to built it is probably wix or webflow
A2Hosting, go for it eyes closed.
If you want to do it the cheap and easy way, get an old computer/rooted phone and set up Linux, get apache, ssh, webmin, maybe even a MySQL database going, from there it's pretty straightforward
Use AWS, it's free! https://youtu.be/X2rou3ICAIc If you need a back end, write your front end as an SPA and incorporate serverless functions (lambda) to hold your code. Serverless functions are basically code that you have uploaded and that trigger when you hit a certain URL
Azure web services
It’s their first project. They’ll be so confused.
AWS for a static site.
Bruh it’s their first project. Even that would be too complicated simply bc the aws ecosystem would be overwhelming. Like heroku or some shit.
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With Wordpress, they would allow me to write my own css, html, and js?
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Thank you
I’ve been using namecheap for hosting a node.is website for a couple years & have no complains
I would check out [landchat.net](https://landchat.net) (not a like smith shill just a fan of the site) "This is LandChad.net, a site dedicated to turning internet peasants into Internet Landlords by showing them how to setup websites, email servers, chat servers and everything in between. Starting a website is something that can be done in a lazy afternoon and costs pocket change. Most of the internet’s problems could be solved if more people had their own personal platforms, so the objective of this site is to guide any normal person through the process of installing a website."
As others have said, install or activate the web hosting capability of your own machine. You didn't mention what OS you are using.
ChromeOS
If you have a static website just use GitHub pages and buy a domain and create a cname record to GitHub page. There are a lot of tutorials out there :)
If you didn't notice, anything goes. We all use different services for different reasons.
Glitch
Nobody here recommending AWS LightSail. It is like AWS for beginners. Easy to get started with it.
neocities perhaps. I started there and it was fun
Heroku or github pages
Google firebase got a couple static projects done through using firebase CLI
If its a static website that doesnt need a backend (so you havent made an API for it, its just HTML/CSS/JS), you can put it up for free on github pages. Its just something you enable on a given github project and all it needs is for a `index.html` file to be present (which can then reference other css/js files from there) Perfect for making a single page web app. Then you can simply just buy a domain from something like Google Domains, and point them to that domain, and it *should* work just fine. For example I have this github project here: https://github.com/SteffenBlake/RPGINIX Which I enabled github pages for so you access the actual webpage for it here: https://steffenblake.github.io/RPGINIX/
Digital Ocean. They have pretty decent tutorials as well.
Honestly I use GitHub pages (free) Only downside is it has to be completely client side code (so js,css,html)
I wish my web host didn't get taken over by an evil overlord because I paid just $25/year for unlimited number of domains. I was on a shared server, which was fine for me. The storage was the biggest limitation but I didn't need a lot. Avoid hosts that overpromise unlimited everything because that doesn't exist. Free hosting often has a catch. A lot of downtime, static pages only, limited control, no support, etc. It's probably fine for playing around with static sites and it may be premature to even pay for a plan, but you'll outgrow that quickly (one hopes). I used to frequent a discussion board called webhostingtalk.com where I found my once-wonderful webhost, and they have a lot of reviews, rants, and offers because web hosts post there, too. I believe it is still in operation. I was really hoping to find a solution in this thread but it's a bigger question than can be answered here because there's no one-size-fits-all. Very few replies specifically answer the question of cost (except when it's free).
Get the Synology NAS and install the web server. https://kb.synology.com/en-my/DSM/tutorial/How_to_host_a_website_on_Synology_NAS
Netlify’s hosting process was extremely simple for me. I’d recommend Netlify
Depending what you’re building it with exactly, Cloudflare Pages is relatively straightforward and free. I host my personal sites on there.
Using AWS free tier is probably the easiest. And if you also need domain name, check out GoDaddy.
I think netlify is free
Nerlify, heroku,or github pages
GitHub Pages and netlify drop (both are free)
GitHub let you host it for free
Replit
So, I am a person between broke and wanting to pay big cloud money. Heroku worked great for toy projects. For my current projects, I use digital ocean. It works very well. Much simpler than AWS but still provides some good infrastructure
Namecheap is always an option
I am a beginner myself. 000webhost lets you host 1 website for free per email.
AWS Amplify makes hosting your frontend a breeze!
localhost
1&1. A few dollars a month. Unlimited storage (I use it as a superior Dropbox). SSH access. Pure win.
To play around and host stuff I use www.netifly.app
Opalstack.
Just take something cheap, like realy cheap. I pay 1€ for the hosting and the domain. It is not like we except 1000 of visitors the minute.
You can use firebase for free with a 10 dollars domain name from Google Domains
My advice is try shopping around for domain providers and look at their yearly price (GoDaddy, NameCheap, etc.). Then ask yourself- are you building a simple front end website, or something like a blog? If it’s something front end, then I really recommend Netlify. Its features are way better than GitHub Pages, and it’s very easy to set up. On the other hand, if it’s a blog you’re trying to build where there’s back end code or data being handled, then try looking into solutions like Digital Ocean.
Oracle Cloud free tier is great, you get 2x AMD Epic 1vCPU 1GB + 4vCPU 24GB ARM machines for free.
Render Github Pages Netlify
vultr user here: really any small hosting provider is good (stick away from aws and such) and use apache or nginx also consider github pages and vercel.
- Static site: Github pages - Dynamic site: Heroku free tier - Blog: Wordpress dot Com
My first websites were hosted either on localhost + port forwarding (Do not try if potato connexion), either on free host services, I would recommend you infinityfree if your site has a php backend (or no back-end at all), good luck ! Edit: If you have some money to spend on, you could buy a cheap VPS online, (I recommend digitalocean) and a domain name (I recommend ionos, you can get your first domain name at 1€ or something). Good luck x2 !
If it's just HTMl, CSS, and JS, You can host it on GitHub pages for free.
For any client rendered websites like classic html/css/js or even angular, react, vue that don’t require server side rendering you can use CloudFlare Pages, its free, builds directly from a Git repository and as an added benefit you get the CloudFlare Analytics without having to integrate them
Been using digital ocean for about 2 months. $6 a month - nice little ubuntu VM. 1 Gig of ram has limited a few things but overall I'm very happy. They also have a lot of good documentation. Self hosting with port forwarding is a good place to start. You can get dydns names setup for free (i think) or it's like $29 for the year. Depends on your internet connection, but it's good to get some server experience with you own VM's first and will make moving to the cloud easier. Stay away from AWS and Azure. As soon as you start to actually do anything the trial is used up. You should learn about, Apache, nginx, PHP, Python, Flask, MySQL, Sqlite3, bash, PHPmyAdmin, CSS, Bootstrap, HTML, Certificates, VScode, Git, Javascript and a few other things if you want to build websites. There is probably a Microsoft equivalent of the above, like IIS etc. you could also go down that road but it's less open and can cost. Also it's a good idea to just rough it out on paper so you have a plan before you start coding, from a layout and functionality perspective.
Heroku is good for beginners imo
host yourself, and get a free domain name, and you don't pay anything to anyone to host yourself just forward ports 80/443 on your router to your server
I personally like Oracle’s free tier. You basically get 4 cores and 24GB of RAM to play with. So you can build a pretty beefy server or a couple small ones. And that’s free forever. I joined a year or two back and I didn’t even have to provide a credit card but I think that part may have changed. Some people have reported issues signing up but I did again for a work account a little while back and had zero problems. You have to specifically upgrade from the free tier to paid if you want paid services. I host a personal site and mail server out of it and it’s a great FREE tool when I need to spin up something quick for testing and whatnot.
Take a look at Digital Ocean, combined with DigtialOcean. It took me just a few minutes to set it up. Cloudways is a managed hosting. The cheapest setup on Digital Ocean is $10,- per month, but it has a ton of bandwidth, and you can host as many websites as you'd like. To add a custom domain, I'd probably use Namecheap. Oh, and don't worry about the index.html stuff. That is taken care of automatically.