I feel overwhelmed by the different aspects. Hosting, hardware, DNS, etc.
If I just want a webpage for my family to hit with like a calendar and some links to other websites, where do I start? Do I have to learn html or something?
I feel overwhelmed by the different aspects. Hosting, hardware, DNS, etc.
If I just want a webpage for my family to hit with like a calendar and some links to other websites, where do I start? Do I have to learn html or something?
What about Wix.com? I've heard from friends it gets the job done.
Go look on GoDaddy and buy their basic of the basic-est package. Should come with everything you need.
You do not need to worry about hardware/DNS. I can break it down simply for you:
DNS is the equivalent of a phonebook. When someone types www.buffyswebsite.com into their address bar, the DNS tells the browser where to look for the site (which translates into an IP address; it's easier for humans to remember a name than a string of numbers)
When you buy hosting, you are basically paying a fee for some rental space in a hardware somewhere owned by the company you're purchasing from. This rental space has everything you need.
Most hosting packages these days come with simple to use one click things that lets you setup a website in a matter of minutes.
What are you trying to do exactly? I feel paying for a host/website name might be overkill here.
edit: just to address one thing here, learning html here is beneficial but not required. a lot of the time you can use the what you see is what you get editor and basically make your website as if building a document in microsoft word. learning the code can help you with tweaks but i would say if you don't plan to do anything else with it then it's not too useful to learn
From what you're talking about doing... have you tried things like Google Family Calendar or Cozi already?
in the beginning, there was only <html>
(I have little to add to what The Stig said, maybe look into wordpress thingie? I never looked at it seriously myself, but a lot of people seem to love it and some of the options it has for WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web publishing.
For ease, I'd recommend Google Calendar at least. Maybe wordpress.
Tho if you're like me, I bet you'd like to do some stuff (like fancy backgrounds) yourself. That does mean learning html; there used to be some word processor like editors (AOL used to make a good one; that was about the only good thing from them imo. However, I can't find it anymore, not to mention it's WAAAAAY out of date now!) but now a days I can't find a free/open source one that I can recommend that is like that. I recommend Lissa Explains for a beginner. W3 Schools is also good for learn and play and figure out what things do.
As for hosting, you do NOT need to pay a thing. Use this to search for a good one; they have reviews. Just find one there that meets your needs. If you're going wordpress, make sure you pick one that has that available. And DNS and stuff? Don't worry about it. A good hoster will handle it for you, either paid or whatever like the Stig said; just put it up.
About the "do I have to learn HTML" thing: depends.
If you use some platform like Wordpress/Joomla/Typo3 most of how the page looks and what it contains can be done with WYSIWYG. You pick a premade template that defines how several "boxes" are arranged that you can fill with widgets for whatever you want displayed.
That only works as long as you find a template and/or widget for what you want. For anything beyond that, there's a bunch of different "languages" that are used for writing web pages.
The most basic is HTML, it can be used for the layout (boxes to fill), content and design (colors, fonts etc). BUT this all-in one approach is only good for static pages (no dynamically changing content like a calender) and it is best practice to separate the design from the content.
The "proper" way to declare how something is supposed to look is via CSS. It's basically a "language" that can describe "elements that have this class/tag/type should look like this".
When you want dynamic content that can grab info from another page or read it from a database etc you need PHP (executed on the server) and/or Javascript (executed in your browser). But that's pretty advanced stuff, not really suitable for a beginner.
There's always sites.google.com I guess for basic shit with just your family?
100% do google sites (new version) before you do anything else. It’s completely free so if you don’t like it you don’t lose anything.
New version does not require coding and you can embed photos, google calendar, etc.
You can also specify who can see the site to keep it private.
Make sure you do the new one as the old one requires codes and they are not updating it as much.
*spoken as someone who has zero background in coding but uses sites for my classroom pages.
If you have any questions feel free to ask as I’ve used it for two years now.
wordpress is pretty easy to use, and has free accounts.