January 26, 2020
After thinking about setting up a website for years, it was time to stop procrastinating. Part of what was holding me up is that the entire process seemed like a gigantic PITA. Like most things, it's not that bad once you start.
Another reason it was hard to get excited about setting up a website is that, based on the little I knew, the tools used to build websites weren't very appealing. I'm still not impressed, but that may change as I learn more.
I started messing with computers years ago on a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I. Later, I gained experience with PDP-11, TOPS-20, the VIC-20, Data General Eclipse, VAX/VMS, along with various generations of Apple computers, Sun Workstations and Windows machines, and there are probably systems I've forgotten. Today, I prefer Linux. For many years, my language of choice was C, then C++, and now it's Java. Of course, there were other languages too – I started composing a list, but most of those languages are dead. Are there any Modula-2 programmers out there? How about SAIL? I thought not.
The point is that, before starting a website, I knew a fair amount about computers in general, but had never done more than glance at the languages and infrastructure used to set up and maintain a website. Six weeks ago, I knew almost zero HTML, CSS or JavaScript, and had no idea what WAMP stands for. On the other hand, I was playing with TCP/IP protocols back when the internet was limited to a few university sites.
Once you have a domain name and a server to host your website, you're halfway there. Unfortunately, there's so much spammy advertising and marketing noise about this topic that searching the web isn't very helpful. If you're lucky, you have an acquaintance who's a web developer and can point you in the right direction. If not, then I found that Namecheap was a good place to register the name. Once I had that, DigitalOcean provided a server. Using something like GoDaddy might work too, but I wanted something more flexible than what GoDaddy (and similar hosts) provides. If you have any real computer chops, then you probably want to avoid GoDaddy and the like; on the other hand, if you are not very computer savvy, then GoDaddy et al. may be a better choice.
The choice of host comes down to how much coding you want to do, and how comfortable you are with system administration tasks. Based on web searches, it initially seemed that everyone is using WordPress. I was only vaguely aware of it, so I downloaded it and spent about two weeks playing with WordPress. I found it to be a frustrating disaster area. Maybe someone who designs websites for a living and knows its quirks can make better use of it, but it was too cumbersome for me. That said, if you just want to set up a simple blog and are willing to stick with the templates provided by WordPress, and you want to avoid coding at all costs, then something like WordPress and GoDaddy might work for you.
Whichever route you take, the process of getting a site up is mostly one of following your nose. Even so, it's still useful to know where your nose will take you. There are three big steps.
Get a name for your site, like overtheyardarm.net.
The technical terms for this is a domain name.
Lots of places can handle this; these places are called registrars.
Their sites will tell you if the name is taken
already, and let you purchase it if it's not. The cost varies, but it should be
in the range of $10 to $15 per year for a name that is not already taken.
Before checking which names are available, make a list of acceptable names. Some of these sites will purchase names that you look up, but don't buy, in the hope that someone will eventually pay much more than $15 for it. If a name you like isn't taken, then buy it immediately. Also, do not let your ownership of a name lapse. If you do, then there's a good chance that someone will buy it out from under you and try to sell it back to you for $thousands.
The name for this site is registered with namecheap.com, and
I have no complaints so far. Then again, a registrar doesn't do much. Their
main purpose is to register the name you've chosen with ICANN (Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), and to route people's browsers to the
correct server (more on that below).
The next step is to find a host for the site. This is the computer system that stores the contents of your pages and "serves" these contents to clients (i.e., people's browsers). Some registrars also run a hosting business. Doing both things in one place does make it simpler, but it's wiser to register the name with a different company than the one hosting the site. If you ever become unhappy with the original host, and change to a new one, you don't want to have to deal with the old host regarding your domain name. The cost for hosting should be anywhere from free to $5 per month — maybe $10 per month if you need something beyond basic service (which is unlikely).
Finding a host that suits your purposes may take some research since their websites are (ironically) not very informative. I've been happy with DigitalOcean, but have only been with them for a few days. Make a list of candidates, then search the internet for the tasks you know you'll need to perform. For instance, you might search "DigitalOcean set up server." It's a good sign if you can find the information you need in a form that is easy for you to understand and follow.
At this point, your name is "out there" and you have a server that can give people your pages, but there's a disconnect. You have to do a bit more so that the registrar sends traffic to your host. Exactly how this is done varies with the registrar and host, but the outcome is the same.
Something called DNS (Domain Name System) converts names of websites, like
overtheyardarm.net, to the particular computer that serves up
the website. You need to tell the registrar how to find that computer, and
you may have to do something on the host end too.
Again, before committing to any registrar or host, it's a good idea to search
the internet for how this is done for any registrar/host candidates. You might
search for something like "namecheap point domain to server."
So far, you have a domain name and a host, but there's no content. Anyone who goes to your website will get some kind of "page not found" error. The host exists, and people are finding it, but the host doesn't know how to respond to requests for content. You need a web server!
This website runs on Linux because that's what I know best. At this point, the discussion parts ways with people who want to use WordPress, or who want to use a Windows-based web server. If you're minimally comfortable with Linux, then read on.
Since you are comfortable with Linux, it's enough to note that something like
apt install apache2
does the trick. After this runs, you have an Apache web server. It listens
for page requests and provides whatever is requested. Depending on how the
host is set up, you may also need to change firewall settings to allow these
requests to get through. The ufw (Uncomplicated FireWall)
command handles that.
Once the server is up, look in /var/www/html. There should be
a file named index.html. This is your home page. By default,
it will show something like "Apache2 Debian Default Page." When people go
to your website, that's what they'll see.
Next you'll want to change the home page to provide your content. Obviously, the first thing you need to do is compose the content. I'm not going to try to provide any kind of tutorial on HTML or JavaScript since there are plenty of places for that.
To compose your content, you can simply type HTML/CSS and JavaScript into a text file on your home machine, then open it as a file with your browser. That works up to a point, but lots of things won't work without access to a web server. In particular, hyperlinks to go from page to page, and various aspects of JavaScript (like Ajax requests) won't work. For those to work, you need a local web server – a LAMP or WAMP (Linux or Windows Apache MySQL PHP) server. Install one of these, and you can then edit your website off-line in a way that better reflects what visitors to your website will see. In fact, you may want to install this and compose some content before you even have a host name. Composing a few pages will tell you whether the entire endeavor is worth the trouble.
Once you have some content, it needs to be uploaded to the server. Lots of people
use something called cPanel to do this, but I know nothing about
how that works. Instead, a few Linux commands get the job done. For your first home page,
as a test, you might compose some HTML that looks like:
<html>
<body>
<h1> Welcome to my page!</h1>
<p> There's nothing here yet, but I'm working on it.</p>
</body>
</html>
Store this in a file called index.html. This will be your new
home page. Use sftp to replace the original contents (as found on the
server) of /var/www/html/index.html. Now, when people go to your
website, they'll see
Welcome to my page!
There's nothing here yet, but I'm working on it.
If you want to upload an entire directory-tree of content, then you can either
tar it up into a single file and transfer it, or use some
other solution.