I need to create a fairly simple website and am a bit confused how to go about this.


Background: I designed a few websites 25 years ago, purely by editing HTML in a text editor, displaying with a browser, then modifying the HTML as necessary to get the final result I wanted.


I figure there has to be a better way now ... especially since one part of the website I want to be a forum, and I figure that must be a canned package of some kind, right?


In my searching around all I found was packages with monthly fees. I have no idea WTF monthly fees are supposed to be for. I've owned my domain names for about 25 years, so don't need them. I've been hosting on hosting services for 25 years, so don't need them.


So why should I pay a monthly fee to someone? For what?


In my mind, what I'm looking for is more-or-less the equivalent of LibreOffice (or McWord) text editor ... except it generates HTML instead of text-editor format files. That plus hopefully canned gizmos to implement common website thingies like forums and blogs and such.


Anyway, I feel like I must be "missing something" here, because it seems like it should be so simple.


Note that I'd love to find a good free software package, but I'm open to paying for really great software. But I don't like paying every month forever. That kind of software rubs me the wrong way. However, if that's all that exists, which is the best of them? And please explain why they have a monthly fee for someone who already owns domain names and hosting.


Thanks!

There are plenty of "canned packages" available without a monthly subscription - including everything that's released with a Free Software license.

Recommending specific packages would need a more accurate description of your needs, but you can find plenty of options listed at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ource_software
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...forum_software

(Also, it's still entirely valid to create sites by editing source code in a text editor.)

There used to be KompoZer, it was great, but it has been abandoned for a long time. Bluefish is much more complicated.

What you might give consideration to would be the static site generators. They produce static HTML in a consistent and standarized manner but have a lot of conveniences. So take a look at Hugo, Pelican, Gatsby, Jekyll, and so on. You might find one that works in a way you like and maybe even in an acceptable scripting language.

Otherwise, a few templates and Emacs do wonders.

you can use geany which is a light IDE and text editor; it will produce html5 template for you.

The basics is that html are "static pages" once you introduce the concept of a forum then that brings in something like php.

It depends on how complicated you want to make it. The basics are that a database stores in fields comments. New comments get inserted into a database. Then via links all comments are displayed to a user.

I did the bone basics of the concept where I wanted to show comments to a blog .

Most people i see empirically though even people who are good enough to development their own php framework prefer to use available software .

eg https://xenforo.com/



if there any are fees involved its for paying those that maintain and keep up to data the software

1 members found this post helpful.

That is a good way to do it even now.
I wonder what exactly you have in mind, how complex?

IMO that should be separate from the site itself.
I wonder where you were looking. There's a whole bunch of FOSS forum software; FluxBB, Discourse...

I remember geeklog, which seems to try to combine forum & blog functionality.

I'm not a friend of WYSIWYG editors ("Composer" they're called).
I recommend to either code sth from scratch, or use a CMS or static site generator instead.

Again, it depends on what sort of website you have in mind there.
A blog with growing content?
A completely static showcase?
...

1 members found this post helpful.

I want to put up a website for a specific brand of airplanes ... small, 2-seat (side-by-side), lightweight (~700 pounds w/o fuel/pilot/cargo), single-engine airplanes. Some are gliders, some are LSA (light sport aircraft), some are rated "experimental".

The primary purpose of the site is for owners of these airplanes to share information:

- describe themselves
- describe their airplanes
- describe accessories, modifications, repairs
- describe dealings with the manufacturer
- describe dealings with the distributor
- describe dealings with the dealers
- describe flying experiences
---- trips
---- events
---- locations
---- troubles & repairs
- arrange to visit other members on trips
- get help from other members during trips


As a natural consequence, this website should be an excellent place for potential buyers/owners of these airplanes to learn what they're getting into before they blow their life savings on one.

#####


I'm not sure how to organize the various aspects of the site yet. For example, I could have a "pilot" and "airplane" section within the forum and just let pilots describe themselves in the "pilot" section and their airplane in the "airplane" section. I suppose that might work for the trips/flights too.



It might be possible to just have an introduction at the top of the main page of a forum, with 2, 3, 5 static HTML pages linked-to from that introduction section.

What I would like to do is create the various portions of the website so they can be grown by the pilots who sign up to the website or forum.

I'll give you one example that I created a few years ago and managed to jam within a forum. It was a list of places where pilots of tiny STOL (short take-off and landing) or "bush" planes could land and fill up their engines with unleaded fuel. Pretty much all airports have 100LL fuel, but that is very high lead content that is not good for many modern engines in small airplanes like these. What these small modern engines typically want is 91+ octane, no lead, and 0% to 10% ethanol.

Since 91+ octane + 10% ethanol is typical premium automobile gasoline (but 0% is difficult to find but better for the engine and/or better fuel economy), I made a list of places small airplanes would land and fill up with 91+ octane gasoline (with 0% or 5% or 10% ethanol) but no lead. My list only included western states, but you get the idea. These kinds of lists and/or articles are the kind of reference that is useful to a great many pilots. It could be put into the forum (and that's what I did), but it could also be done with an article or some other mechanism (where others could also add more locations to buy this kind of fuel).

#####

I'm sure you can imagine there will eventually be quite a few sets of "trip reports" that contain text, images and video clips taken by pilots on their trips through canyons & mountains and over lakes, rivers, etc. I assume these can fit within the forum format, but what do I know? Answer: Not much! :-o

#####

Anyway, I hope that gives you an idea. I'm not sure how popular this will become or how far this site will grow. But that's the idea.

The more members of the site/forum can grow the content, the better.

Suggestions?

-----

PS: I'm going to be visiting southern Nevada fairly soon, so if anyone near there is really good at this and willing to show me how to create a website, that would be very convenient --- at least for me! Hahaha. I'm an electronics engineer and have developed many large hardware and software projects in microcode, assembly language, C and XBasic. So I understand programming, I just don't know these web languages or technologies (just basic HTML). I've even written compilers with interactive, graphical GUI designer tools (that generates code to create/operate GUIs) ... but not to generate HTML or work with websites. Annoying, huh! :-o

After reading your first post, I was going to suggest a static site generator.

• Jekyll
• Hugo

After reading your second post, I'd recommend looking into Drupal.

Wordpress also comes to mind, although I don’t personally like working with it
But then, i’m from the code in a text editor school...

OK, you got your work cut out for you.
Dynamic content, can't just write HTML to achieve that.
I think the easiest solution is to use one of the available forum softwares.
You might also want to look into geeklog (their own site is also created with geeklog).
If you want a more tailored, customised solution you should check out one of the content management frameworks like Drupal or Typo3 etc.

I concur - to me that's a description of a forum with a handful of categories and some custom profile fields.

On your last point, I'd point out that customising forums doesn't need to be hard, and may create a more consistent experience than melding two things together.

Thanks for all the ideas. At this point I more-or-less understand what everyone is talking about at the abstract level ... but have no concrete experience beyond writing those HTML webpages 25 years ago.

So let me ask this question from a slightly different angle.

Roughly how much would it likely cost me to get someone to create such a website for me?

As a sub-question, let me ask the following. Would it be practical for someone to create such a web-site in a short enough period of time that it would be practical for me to visit them and watch them create the web-site ... so at the end of the process I would be familiar with all the tools they created the web-site with (or vice-versa ... they travel to a location where I am (or will be for a while) and "show me").

Since I'm familiar with programming and creating software tools, I'm guessing that at the end of such a process I would be able to make changes to tweak the website to improve the functionality of the various sections.

Part of what I'm asking is ... roughly how much work is involved in creating a website with the elements I described? I guess that's two questions. How much work for someone with no specific experience (beyond plain-old HTML), and how much work for someone who has created a few websites in the past 2 or 3 years (with currently up-to-date/popular/effective tools)?

Depends on the degree of tweaking you wanted. Also I'm not sure how viable it is to travel to a martian moon.

Installing forum or content management software will have a browser-based interface that anyone reasonably technical should be able to follow without issue.

It's probably a good idea to setup a local Apache-MariaDB-PHP or Nginx-Postgres-Python or whatever and experiment with a few forums and frameworks to get a feel for their different features, what changes you're capable of and what you'd need/want someone else to do for you.

Some bits will be easier than you expect, some bits you'll expect to be easy and they wont be - and those bits will vary between the different software (and some apparently difficult things will of course be easy for someone experienced with the software).

Just remember that you're playing/prototyping - do it on a local machine/VM and don't be afraid to throw things away and start again.

+1

If you use a VM and take a snapshot of a freshly installed system with Apache2 or Nginx and nothing else, then you can roll back almost instantaneously when you want to or need to start over.

Another way would be to have a spare microcomputer like a Raspberry Pi and a clone few spare microSD cards set up with a web server and nothing else. At least with the Raspberry Pi, it handles everything well enough for prototyping and experimenting and when you put in a new microSD card, you get a completely new system with no trace of the previous system.

And then what?
You will have no clue about how it works.
It will require administration. Are you going to make a contract with this person to continuously provide full support? On site, or on a virtual server?
No.
You should really take a closer look at some of the forum softwares we discussed.
I don't think it's that difficult to get one up and running for starters.