Hi EMC! I am thinking about starting a personal website so I can publish my writing and use it for other needs. I was wondering if anyone has a personal website and has experience building one. I would need help to choose the best website builder (I've worked with Weebly and a little on Wix) and then maybe just examples on how to populate it and the social protocol to the whole idea. As you can see, I am very new. This first thing I would like to have on my website is a form where people can enter information about themselves, and then once approved, I can publish the information on a password protected page. Does anyone know a website builder that will let me do this? Thank you so much for all your help! If you have any questions, please let me know. If you are an experienced website builder and could provide me with valuable advice, please let me know so I can PM you Sincerely, `EB
I am not a Fan of Wix or Weebly... Are you looking to host yourself or from a service like wix? If you are doing it yourself, get a free domain from dot.tk and then I would suggest building through a 3rd party software like Wordpress, or Joomla, There are millions of free templates out there, or you can easily build you own (There are millions of youtube vids out there). But first thing you want to know is are you hosting yourself or not? Then what program best fits your needs... The build off that... I have a Book Exchange site @ https://bookexchange.ca This site is built off Joomla, and my build Portfolio; finchrocks.tk This site is built off Wordpress.... Edit; These are hosted off my VPS Server by 1and1, and using free cloudflare for protection ontop of the firewall,
Wow thanks that's really good advice. If possible I would like to host myself with my own domain. What exactly happens when I get my domain from dot.tk? I will look at Joomla and Wordpress. Thanks!
My suggestion would be to study HTML/CSS and optionally a web language, then roll your own website; find a cheap enough hosting provider, dump the stuff online and you're off. The problem with using those "website builders" (actually it's more of a hosting service than a website builder IMO) is that you'll more than often make yourself dependent on their services. Even if you could somehow download whatever code they generated it remains to be seen if you can easily pick that up and use it somewhere else. Which could be something you might want to do in the future. If you build things yourself (which doesn't have to be all too difficult) then you're also gain more freedom. Is your hosting provider getting crazy by doubling their prices? Or maybe they're telling you that you can no longer host with them for free? No problem if you build your own setup: just go to another provider, upload your stuff, and you're done. Now, I can well understand that coding the whole thing yourself may sound a bit daunting. Another good alternative is to find a hosting provider which can provide a CMS ("content management system") which you can use. For example WordPress is a pretty commonly used blog / website tool and many hosting providers support it. If you build something in such an environment you usually also have an option to download your contents. And that allows to you pick 'm up and install it somewhere else as well. In general: be very careful around "free" hosting providers. Most of the times their services aren't free, they're simply not telling you what you're paying (usually a lock-in so that you can't easily take your site elsewhere).
You can find domain names with dot.tk that are free, (Some are paid, but those are popular words), All mine are free. Just get a year, as its free and renew it every year when it expires for another year, and its free. Then For your own hosting you will want to look at what you know/how cheap... For example, You can get a Shared hosting for like a 1$ a month, or get a VPS like I do where its a Linux Ubuntu Server core, where you run everything in linux. This way you have a Set amount of Hardware, and Full access. Shared Plans, you share a set of hardware with a set amunt of other people, and you have part access. Just look up all the different types of hosting and find your best fit.
When I go to check out it asks me to use a DNS service and enter an IP address. Is this what you mean by hosting? I assume I can host on Wordpress and not pay money? As always, great info Yes I am not very good at code but I suppose I should learn. I just wanted to see if there was an easy and quick way to do what I needed.
dot.tk is not a Hosting Provider, all it is, is for the domain. And when you sign up, then you can make a domain, and choose a 1 year plan for free. From there you need your servers DNS/Name Servers for the Domain to point there. For example, Mine point to cloudflare, and cloudflare points to my IP of my server. You can find free wordpress hosting but its not that good or trustworthy, Like i say you can get a Shared hosting for 1$ or look at the many other plans out there. (I have tired over 400 free hosting plans, and not one was good IMO). I Would strongly suggest going for some sort of paid hosting, or hosting yourself. Like I say, I use a VPS though 1and1 and its a Full access and full hardware access server. ~Finch
