I know a couple nonprofits that need a very basic website. More like a business card online.
What's the cheapest way of doing this? Ideally something that has a fairly easy interface, good for non web-developers (like Weebly or something) but cheap is more important.
  • Github Pages
  • Gitlab Pages
  • Cloudflare Pages
All of them offer free static website hosting with support for custom domains. You can use Hugo, Jekyll, Pellican, Gatsby, or whatever static site generator you prefer.
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Looks really interesting, thanks. They definitely don't appear to package "free static website hosting" as a package. I guess you have to dig around the sites, and figure out how to do it?
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Cheap. Easy. Quality.
Pick two
Cheap/easy (not quality): a Facebook page
Easy/quality (not cheap): wix, squarespace, etc.
Cheap/quality (not easy): https://pages.github.com/ or self hosting in general.
Watch this tutorial on GH pages to decide if its right for you.
You can find tons of free html templates online and make a few edits to customize the text and photos, then upload to Github.
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Vercell has a free tier if you can code
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Thanks. What level of coding are we talking about?
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Just the ability to throw together a frontend website using a framework like react or angular. Idk if you can do plain HTML pages on vercel but if you're gonna do that just use github pages
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If your project is Open source you can also have an higher limit for free.
Not only for static pages, but their serverless functions too.
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Try "Carrd" website builder. Unlimited bandwith Unlimited storage Nice looking websites (clean and neat)
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Is weebly expensive?
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Weebly isn't as cheap as I had thought it would be. I spent about $150 for a year, paid in advance.
Also the CONSTANT upsell is annoying.
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Wordpress or wix would be my first two guesses. Or GoDaddy?
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It's a no-API "static" website? I can recommend AWS:
  • Put the website files in an S3 bucket.
  • Set up a CloudFront distribution on front of it (cheaper and faster than to serve from S3 directly).
The only real cost you incur will be CloudFront itself. You can estimate it yourself based on anticipated traffic: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/
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Using Github and Netlify.
Create a free account on Github and create your website in HTML, CSS and/or JavaScript. Add those file to Github by committing those files and pushing it to Github.
Create a free Netlify account. Once those file are on Github you can connect your Github account to your Netlify account. Once it's connected it will automatically deploy it on a random url, but you can give a custom name. Your url will be: https://<your-custom-name>.netlify.app
Every time you make a change to the website and push it to Github, Netlify will put the changes online.
At this point you have zero costs.
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Consider only wordpress and add a domain. Best for seo and easy to use. Many free & paid plugins etc.
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Most easy way that requires no programming or IT skills I know of is https://www.blot.im
It’s $4 per month 👍
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github pages static website, free.
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I used Wix and liked it. Paid to not have ads though. I use google.sites for school things, assignments where I need to make a website, because it's free.
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WordPress.com
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Gcp or s3 bucket. If you name them correctly, google/amazon handle the glue.
Drag and drop html.
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I use Wix mainly for very simple sites, or for something more complex, Tilda is good once you get used to it.
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Shared web host like Bluehost
Or you can get a cheap VPS and configure it all yourself, and you’ll have to increase the size of your VPS the more you use it.
Shared hosting like Bluehost is super cheap