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Comment by funkyy | Hacker News Reader

The best way for a newbie would be to buy a domain, then buy a proper hosting with Cpanel. You can get Hostgator for 1c for first month or get Hawkhost for $3/mo. Cpanel is quite easy and auto-install scripts provided by Softaculous makes it breeze when it comes to installing common scripts and cms.

You might also explore simple website building companies like Wix or Squarespace.

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Why not a static generator like Ghost, Jekyll or Pelican? That way it can be hosted on GitHub Pages.

Can't beat $0/month.

https://pages.github.com/

Yes - but wouldnt this be on username.github.io?

You can set domains in a CNAME file in the root of a repository.

For newbie CPanel is the easiest way to get a hold of web hosting and web design imo. Since you are in hosted environment there is not many things you can screw, support is always there for you and you can quickly start.

With static websites and github you need to have at least proper basic understanding of html, hosting and programming. Also simple mistakes can cause big damage and since there is no live help, you need to spend a lot time searching for answers online.

IMO CPanel hides too much. You can git commit && git push an index.html to GitHub and be up and running very quickly. That way when you get your first real job you're already going to have some basic Git skills.

If you are looking for job like that.

Yo are talking like a programmer, not sure if OP is one. From a programmer point of view - your option is much better. From newbie - absolutely not.

From the OP:

>Any good current tutorials? I'm thinking of working with the MEAN Stack or just in general javascript tech stacks.

I think they're a programmer.

I am a programmer - junior as CS in college - I know html and css very well due to my job (in additon to C# and other knowledge) - but I have little to no idea on how to create my own "website"

How are your git skills? I really really like GitHub Pages - https://pages.github.com/

1. Buy a domain

2. Get hosting (Sometimes 1 & 2 are through the same company but don't have to be)

3. Point your domain to your hosting via updating forms at your domain name provider/hosting provider (if 1 & 2 aren't from the same company)

4. FTP your html and css etc up to the www directory on your hosting provider

5. Check it all works, fix stuff that doesn't.

Since you know html and css . . .

Buy a domain at any registrar . . .

Buy hosting from some place like hostgator (even for a month just to play around with it). When you purchase your hosting set your primary domain to the domain you purchased.

At your domain registrar point(chanage) the A record to your hostgator hosting IP address this is in the cpanel DNS.

Create a simple html page, name is index.html

Now FTP your html and css in to the public_html folder on your hostgator hosting.

So enter your domain in a browser and it should display your html page you uploaded.

It might take some time for the DNS to resolve but usually it's ready pretty fast.

Now you have your feet wet with setting up a basic website you can look in to hosting a MEAN stack. For that I'd recommend hosting on Digital Ocean.

Another recommendation is to connect with classmates already doing this stuff. They can make recommendations and give you some one on one assistance.

Right, missed that. Seems like github is perfect for him, or plain simple DigitalOcean or Vultr with Bootstrap to learn environment creation as well.

Haven't heard anyone recommend CPanel in a decade. It exists in a bit of an uncanny valley now. If you're not a programmer, it's much easier to setup a site on Wordpress, Weebly, SquareSpace, Google Sites, or any number of other hosted WYSIWYG editors. If you are a programmer, you probably want a PaaS like Heroku, GitHub Pages, or Google AppEngine.

There's a difference between programming and dev ops. What makes Heroku or AWS better than renting a VPS with cPanel/WHM? The latter is much more straight forward to me.

Ghost isn't a static site generator. It's a Node.js app.

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