How Do I start/design/implement a website for myself?

July 17, 2015 7:01 PM

For a novice. Who doesn't have a lot of money to spend and wants to learn how to do this himself (asking for a friend).

How would you advise a novice about starting a website? This would be a personal website, with sections for his writing, his music, etc. Let's start with registering a domain name. So let's say he knows how to do that. Then what?

Do people still use Dreamweaver?

Or what's the 2015 way to design a simple website?

Thanks!

posted by DMelanogaster to Computers & Internet (16 answers total)

If this is someone who has little interest in Learning Web Development, and just wants his own site with minimal fuss, there's Wordpress (free but a little fussy) or Squarespace (super duper easy, but $8/month).
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:10 PM on July 17, 2015

Seconding Squarespace. The $8/month is billed annually, but that also comes with one domain name registration. There are enough options with templates and customization that it won't feel too cookie-cutter.

If you want a cheaper, simpler solution, you can register a domain name and point it at Tumblr.
posted by brentajones at 7:43 PM on July 17, 2015

It seems to me that Squarespace is the 2015 version of this.
posted by Miko at 7:43 PM on July 17, 2015

Seconding Wordpress.com Its a great way to start and the basic level is free. They can hep with domain registration for a small yearly fee, but it's not mandatory to have a domain with them when you sign up. You can always try it out and add a domain later.
posted by keptwench at 7:44 PM on July 17, 2015

I would not advise you to pay nearly $100/year for hosting a webpage. Setting up wordpress on a site such as dreamhost is really easy and a domain name is just $12 a year. And if you look around you can find much cheaper webhosts as well. I use stablehost. One click setup.
posted by nostrada at 7:45 PM on July 17, 2015

Another vote for squarespace.
posted by cgg at 7:46 PM on July 17, 2015

Squarespace all the way. There are cheaper alternatives, sure, but they require vigilant maintenance and patching if you don't want malware injected into your site through the exploit du jour. And Wordpress doesn't respect line breaks, which infuriates me.
posted by Andrhia at 7:53 PM on July 17, 2015

I used Weebly and it was basically like building with Legos. They make all the various shapes and all I had to do was stick together the pieces I wanted. And I got my domain through them.
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:56 PM on July 17, 2015

Yeah, I've had a Wordpress for a long time but now that I've tried Squarespace, I think it's worth it. The designs are better and more contemporary (any decent Wordpress theme is paid anyway) and the editing is dead easy. If you don't feel like hand coding stuff and figuring out your own hosting, it's great. I know I could stay with Wordpress but it's a little more baroque and honestly, a few bucks a month is not a bad deal considering how much easier Squarespace is.
posted by Miko at 8:04 PM on July 17, 2015

Google Sites if by "do it himself" is code for "set it up himself" and not "code HTML/CSS/etc from scratch himself". Google Sites are free, fairly trivial to set up, and don't require him to maintain the backend so he can proceed directly to the "put in content" stage. They provide step-by-step instructions for setting up a site to use a domain name for many major registrars.

Also putting in a plug for Namecheap as a registrar, which I starting using because of past AskMe recommendations.
posted by bookdragoness at 8:15 PM on July 17, 2015

Lynda.com has a free 10 day trial. The content is excellent and they have a bunch of content on basic web development.
posted by gregr at 6:20 AM on July 18, 2015

Free wordpress.com site. If you get off the training wheels, then export the data and import it into your own shiny domain at a future date.
posted by terrapin at 6:57 AM on July 18, 2015

If you want a cheaper, simpler solution, you can register a domain name and point it at Tumblr.

There are a lot of nice Tumblr themes that look like all kinds of websites, and they have easy options to change. The best ones are paid, but it's a one time cost. And if your friend wants to learn a little html and css, tinkering with a theme is an easy way to do that.
posted by bluefly at 7:01 AM on July 18, 2015

Best way in my opinion is to get your domain and then just get a wordpress site and install a theme. This way you are 50% there, now you just have to put in some data. If you want to customize it use someone from guru.com or upwork.com and you can get pretty cheap and good labor.
posted by Artemaximus at 11:04 AM on July 18, 2015

Nthing Squarespace. Easy, nice looking, decent support.
posted by swheatie at 3:29 PM on July 18, 2015

Wix is another option and I think their pricing might be a little better than Squarespace.
posted by adamvasco at 8:35 AM on July 19, 2015