I would love to have a website, it would be MLP geared. A resource for me to share all my merchandise and other pony ponderings. I just can't bring myself to invest the time and expense. I hate how you have to pay for the site name and hosting and it's not like a 1 time fee, no, you can only get x-number of years and then the price goes up, usually a lot! It doesn't seem worth it to make my dream website to just have the service/host double the price once my contract is up and then it just dissolves into the ether cause I don't want to pay the new much higher fee
I do personally wish it was a one-time fee myself, but it makes sense. Your site would be stored on their servers, and it takes money to keep those servers up and running from the electricity to maintenance to whatever else. I think if you really wanted to avoid that you'd likely have to create your own server setup, which can be really costly on its own.
As for a hosting service changing its price and you potentially losing all of your hard work, that's really where I think you probably don't have to worry as much as you think. From everything I've seen, when you pay for a domain name that site is yours. It seems like most hosting services offer domain migration, so in theory you should be able to transfer your site to another service. Worse comes to worst, you might be able to go into your site's code and copy it all, so you can manually add it back into your new site. Otherwise, you ultimately just stop paying for your site, generally the worst that happens is a bunch of pages get hidden and the domain reverts to the free version.
I don't know if these things are entirely universal, these are just things I've noticed that seem to be pretty standard.
if i were to make a website or websites... definitely an art & mlp collection gallery. i'd try & be creative & put all my heart into it. i'd really like to have a one stop place for that kinda thing. currently feels too complicated for me but maybe i'll get around to it someday
anyone know a free website maker out there thats not too complicated to use?
Maybe Wix or Weebly? I've been goofing around with those lately, especially wix which seems pretty good. It's a little bit of a learning curve at first because of the sections feature, but it's really customizeable and mostly makes use of template pieces so it should be fairly easy to use, as far as site builders go. Weebly I know was a popular one for a while, I've ended up checking it out too but I don't remember what I thought of it. I think it was more limited.
With the Elon buying twitter fiasco going on I've been introduced to a few of sites I wasn't aware existed, including
Neocities. It's modeled after Geocities; which I assume most of us old farts will remember. I think it might be just what you're looking for
@Gingerbread
Some other low-bar option are Tumblr and Wordpress (.org, the .com costs money). I used to have my domain name pointed at my Tumblr so it would look a little more professional. It can be a little tricky to set up but my registrar helped walk me through it. I never could get it to work with Wordpress though.
Right now I have a "landing" page through Carrd.co (which also has a free version btw!) It was pretty easy set up and the hosting was reasonable. Eventually I want a host service that I can set up an online shop with so I don't have to rely on Etsy for sales.
Oh? I will definitely have to look more into this stuff as well, my interest is very piqued o:
Can you tell us some more about how you have your domain set up, please? c: If you want to of course! That just sounds like a system I've never used before.
Edit: Oh, my gosh, I'm taking a look at this neocities now and now I'm super excited! I'm definitely going to try this out, thank you so much for sharing that link!
Edit 2: Oh, no, okay, actually I don't think I care for neocities all that much. I signed up and started making something, but it's
super manual, only allows one site per account / email for free, doesn't allow you to preview your changes before saving them, and doesn't offer a "publish" feature so the moment you save your site it immediately goes live,
and it adds your site to the newly updated list on the site's home page so there's no privacy while you're getting set up.
You do have to write all of the code for your website yourself, so if you're not into that then I wouldn't use neocities. For anyone else, I think there are three main use-cases: You've already made a website offline and you just need a service to push it online, you haven't made a site yet but you know how to code and would appreciate some inspiration and/or a automatic code checker feature, or you're a novice interested in learning coding and want the inspiration and resources neocities offers.
Just my personal thoughts on it from what I've explored.
I’m completely lacking in the knowledge of creating a website… and I’m okay with it. :[ My E is learning it all and I have so much other random knowledge. Between the two of us, we can live with or without tech gadgets, internet, and electricity. We both agreed that, even without electricity to heat water, indoor plumbing was the best, though.^-^ Have we got it right? lol Anyway, I’m glad that so many can do what I can’t. I hope you let me see all the awesome sites you start.
Ohhh, without electricity is a bold choice. But I've seen some people who do it, it's kind of an amazing lifestyle in this day and age. I kinda of envy that a little bit haha. And definitely! I've made a few designs already I'm not happy with, but if I land on something I'll be happy to share it.
---Also late response because I had to take a break for a little bit---