Making a website??

[Nathan4102]

I'm looking to get a website going pretty soon, but I have a few questions. First, how does getting a domain work? I'm planning on buying from godaddy, but after I buy the domain, how do I edit my website? Would godaddy provide an editor for me to put my code in? How would I tell the editor weather I'm writing in HTML, or CSS, or JS? Obviously I'm gonna learn a bit of HTML before I get a website, but I want to know how Id actually use the website as well.

[Insectoid]

I wouldn't recommend godaddy. They are evil. Unfortunately I don't know of any alternatives. I just know that godaddy is evil.

[Nathan4102]

Could you explain why GoDaddy is evil? It has the highest ratings on all the sites I've seen...

[rdrake]

Depends if you like elephants or not.

[Nathan4102]

O.o That's horrible... Any suggestions for alternatives? Also still looking for answers on original question.

[Panphobia]

Whether they are evil or not is irrelevant. The service they provide is what matters.

[DemonWasp]

In this case, though, the service is widely known to be subpar. There are a lot of other hosting services out there, most of which don't have the terrible reputation that GoDaddy has.

Also, many of them don't blatantly lie about their uptime. For further details, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Daddy#Controversies

[Zren]

You don't have to buy your domain and web hosting at the same place. You can buy a .ca domain for 10$ at http://www.10dollar.ca . I'm not sure who to use for a paid host though.

Just understand that you probably don't need the best of the best. Stick with the lowest tier. I very much doubt you'll use more than 100Mb storage space unless you are hosting binaries/archives. If you are, then just use a file host like http://www.mediafire.com/

What do you plan on putting on your site anyways? If you just plan to practice, I'd recommend using one of the millions of free web hosts out there.

Eg: http://www.awardspace.com/

[Nathan4102]

Well for the first month or so, Ill just be screwing around learning HTML/CSS/JS blah blah blah, but after that, I plan to create a gaming site of some sort. I've already got a few cool game idea's I'd like to make, so after I learn JS, or maybe flash or python, I'll start making the site into a game site.

For the most part though, The site is just going to be a learning experience for me, nothing too serious. 10dollar.ca looks good, I'll probably get my domain from there.

I still don't quite understand how I'd go about editing the site. Like would I do it through my web hosting site? Would I just upload .html files to them?

[Zren]

You buy a domain from a registrar, who will register your domain and tell it where your DNS servers are. A number of registrars will host your DNS servers as well.

The DNS server maintains your subdomains. Eg: domain.com, www.domain.com, mx.domain.com, foo.domain.com. This is where you tell the subdomain to point to a particular server. Eg: www.domain.com would point to your webserver which would be run by your web host.

To put files on your web server by using FTP (file transfer protocol). Use FileZilla after your host gives you your FTP username/password/ftp server url.

Once you get used to editing static web pages, you could move on to a scripting language like PHP and using a database to edit content like a blog post.

Also, you don't need to buy a domain if you are using a free web host as they'll give you a free (unattractive) subdomain.

[Nathan4102]

I think I understand it now, thanks for the information!

[Nathan4102]

One more question. On http://www.awardspace.com/ there are two plans I'm interested in. One is the free one, and the other is the 41c/m one. Which plan should I get? Obviously I don't need a ridiculous amount of storage or traffic, and I only need one domain. But the 5 dollar plan has Python and Ruby, and I feel I might need that...

Thanks

[Zren]

5$ is in impulse buy territory.

There's nothing stopping you from first making a free server, then buying a 5$ one before the sale ends.

Unless you plan on using Drupal, a Content Management System (CMS) (sorta like Wordpress but in python), or writing scripts that are always updating 24/7 then don't bother buying it for Python/Ruby. If you do end up with wanting to try a python/ruby webserver, then check out Heroku. It has a free dev tier for learning. I'm currently using them for a flask (python) webserver, and a NodeJS webserver.

The hardware you'll be on as a paying customer will (hopefully) be better. That said, I honestly can't remember the differences between free and basic tier from when I used awardspace as it's been awhile.

[rdrake]

Hosts I've either used or had recommended to me:

• For shared hosting, I've used A Small Orange in the past. If you want a good starting point I'd really recommend them. They offer great support, a stable environment, and are quite affordable with room to grow on their shared plans.
  
• I've heard good things about these guys if you're running a very small site and want pay-as-you go. If you start to serve large files they can get expensive pretty quickly.
  
• As was mentioned before, Heroku is a great PaaS. They support numerous common stacks, use PostgreSQL as the default database (wordpress only supports MySQL, but PostgreSQL is wonderful), and offer a free tier. I'd look at Heroku once you get more advanced.

I've bought my domains either directly from ASO in the past, or from Namecheap.

rdrake's law of choosing a web host: If the company's site has numerous pictures of stock models and groups of smiling models staring at a presentation, they're probably not worth dealing with. Odds are they will try to lock you in and never let you leave.

[BigBear]

My issue with GoDaddy is that it doesn't use cPanel.

@Zren Drupal is php

Are you planing on having dynamic content or just static pages?
You said you want to make a game site. Do you want to play games on your site?

Quote:

How would I tell the editor weather I'm writing in HTML, or CSS, or JS?

Put simply a website is a collection of webpages. A webpage in its simplest form is an .html file. While an html can technically contain CSS or JavaScript, they are usually placed in .css and .js respectively. Even with CSS and Javascript in separate files you still need to import them into HTML.

Getting a little bit more complicated there are cgi scripts where you can run a scripting language as a webpage with the file extension .cgi.

Then there are Content Management Systems (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal), which make creating sites really easy, but make customizations more difficult.

The extra knowledge you need to customize something is quite large. Most of the time there is a ready made solution (Add-ons, extensions, etc) but if there is not, writing your own is not trivial.

Then there are frameworks like Ruby on Rails or Django, which require you to build your site from the ground up but give you a deeper understanding and make customizations easier.

Comparing CMS' to frameworks.

With a framework you actually directly control and see what your database looks like (for better or for worse). Writing your own code requires more work up front than a ready made solution but if you need to customize the ready made solution to do something it currently doesn't, there is a large knowledge gap, whereas modifying your own code is trivial.

I would recommend Django and start developing on your local machine and play around with web development before you worry about hosting, especially paying for hosting.

And if you do want to put it online, I would recommend Heroku. You get one Dyno (thread) for free and it is a lot like hosting it on your own computer.

Django Resources:
http://gettingstartedwithdjango.com/
https://django.2scoops.org/
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/tutorial01/