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I want to make a small website, but I have zero knowledge of web hosting

WearingglassesWearingglasses Of the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered User regular
You know one of those randomizing sites? Like there could be a button in the middle, you press it, and a random item comes up - either D&D town names, Superhero names, that sorta thing. I want to make one of my own, but as it's a bit more complicated than just picking randomly from a list, I'd like to make it with Java, PHP or some other tech in the backend (I have some programming ability); worse comes to worst I can muck around in Javascript. Are there any totally free hosting that lets me do this? Do I need to understand what CMS means and how they work?

Posts

  • DelzhandDelzhand Registered User, Transition Team regular
    Your best bet as a learner is going to be plain HTML and CSS, and a bit of javascript on top. You can do this for free on your own computer, because javascript runs in your browser. Java isn't a web language, and PHP isn't a good choice for what you want because you don't need the headache of a backend to accomplish your goals. You definitely don't need a CMS.

    Once you get it running on your computer you can throw it onto any web host in the world and it'll work, but the only truly free permanent hosting for html pages I know of is gitlab pages. Git is a version control system that's kinda orthagonal to your specific task, but it's considered core knowledge for any programmer.

    There's plenty more to be said, but we'd probably need more info about your project.

  • WearingglassesWearingglasses Of the friendly neighborhood variety Registered User regular
    It's a bit silly, but:

    The randomizer outputs a "Street Fighter" character, with bio and a list of special moves. A basic Bio would go like:

    AIKIDO: She is a lanky aikido prodigy, using her immense speed to catch her opponent unawares. She is fighting because regular fights now bore her.

    I've got a basic design on how the whole move-list generation would go (Projectiles, Anti-airs, Dive attacks, Command Grabs, etc. each with tags to further define how it works), but it's mostly done in Java.

    My experience as a dev with Java is mostly on JSF, so I was hoping I could leverage what I know for a site - the actual work I've done is only part of a whole; I've never done ground-up setups of websites, so while I'm familiar with backend/frontend stuff, the whole framework of websites is not something I've done often (or, for what it's worth, recently).

  • DelzhandDelzhand Registered User, Transition Team regular
    Ah, I see. So it sounds like maybe there's a bit more logic than just string-replacement/randomization. Personally I'd still probably do it in JS, not because it's the best tool, but because it requires the least setup. If you want PHP you're gonna need paid hosting, which you can get for fairly cheap, but you won't be able to test it on your local machine without a fully-functional dev environment.

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