🏠 Web Hosting Services
Web Hosting
A web host is a server that hosts the files of your website, and serves them when someone visits your site. Because we are creating sites that are just simple HTML & CSS files, and maybe some images or other assets, our websites are static, so the type of web hosting service we need is called static hosting. Below are a few options for static hosting services, along with some pros and cons of each one; this will be expanded as we gather more information.
Neocities.org
This is the web host that we are using in class. It is a great service to start out on because they provide a web interface for editing your HTML and CSS files, but you can also easily download your whole site and move it to another service if you'd like.
Pros
- Provides a basic code editing interface through their website so you can edit your site without having to install anything on your computer
- Offers multiple ways to download or upload files
- Free option with 1GB storage limit and neocities domain
Cons
- If you need more storage or want to use your own domain (i.e. http://yourcustomname.com) you will need to upgrade for $5/month (which adds up to $60/year) — not a terrible deal but there are cheaper methods out there
Github Pages
With a bit of technical know-how, it is possible to publish a static website through Microsoft's GitHub.
https://docs.github.com/en/pages/quickstart
Pros
- You can publish a static website with storage limit of 1GB, and a custom domain, for free
- Because websites are a git repository, this gives you version control, letting you see the history of your edits
Cons
- GitHub is owned by Microsoft, so in addition to being run by a dubious company that endorses irresponsible AI tech, the perks of the free edition may go away at any point; be ready to move your site to a new host when this happens
- Can be confusing to set up, especially for those who don't already use GitHub
- Your website repository must be public unless you have a paid plan