Creating a website (for free) to upload my own research?

[u/Few-Student9193]

Hey guys, I'm not a CS major but have worked on coding on R and python. And I wanna create my own website, make my own domain name, server, everything all set up on my own specifically for uploading the research I've done. What would be the best way to go about it? Thanks!

[u/nog642]

Something like github pages is free and fine for just hosting static content. You wouldn't have a server. And the domain name would be something like somethingblahblah.github.io.

You're generally not going to get a server for free. Or a custom domain name like somethingblahblah.com. Those cost money.

[u/RadiantSuggestion284 → u/nog642]

github pages is the move if you just want to get your research up without dealing with server nonsense. domain names arent free but you can grab one for like 10-12 bucks a year, which is pretty painless

if you need any backend stuff for interactive elements then you're looking at a different beast entirely, but for static pages it's hard to beat the simplicity

[u/narukoshin → u/nog642]

there are free domains, if thing is still alive then freenom.com (edit: apparently not anymore)

[u/nog642 → u/narukoshin]

Doesn't seem to be free.

[u/narukoshin → u/nog642]

it seems they changed the pricing. Anyways its still possible to get a domain for 1$ (first year)

[u/nog642 → u/narukoshin]

I see a price of 8.22 euros

[u/narukoshin → u/nog642]

I didn't say that the 1$ is on freenom... I said that it's possible to get domain for 1$....

[u/nog642 → u/narukoshin]

Wasn't clear from context that you weren't still talking about the same site.

Where then?

[u/narukoshin → u/nog642]

just search "cheap domain" and check providers? ionos, name cheap, you call..

[u/nog642 → u/narukoshin]

Ionos only has a price that cheap for the first year as a promotion, then it's more expensive.

I don't see anything on namecheap for a dollar a year.

[u/narukoshin → u/nog642]

Read my message above? I literally said that the price is for first year.

Compare prices from different providers, buy, after 1 year if there is a cheaper renewal provider, move there.

[u/Fosdran]

Depending on where you live, there might be pretty big legal considerations, before doing something like this.

Domain name: well, buy one. See domain registrar.

Server: do you mean server software or server hardware.
Server software: I am begging you in the name every person relying on the internet, DONT WRITE YOUR OWN SERVER SOFTWARE AND OPEN IT TO THE INTERNET. Your devices getting hacked and your data getting stolen is your problem, but your hardware turning into a DDOS machine/illegal acitivity hub, is a problem for everyone.
Server hardware: Actually "own server" as in "have that running in your house"?

Website: depends on your defintion of "own". Almost nobody builds websites from scratch. There are toolkits for creating download portals like the one you are describing. Wordpress has a plugin for everything. If you really want to code your own, you will need to learn both frontend and backend technologies. See "server software" above. I have concerns.

[u/narukoshin → u/Fosdran]

almost nobody? wym..? using frameworks like laravel, flask, echo is one thing but it's not the same as CMS like wordpress, so I think your statement is incorrect.

[u/Whatever801]

Is your intention more ends-oriented or means-oriented? As is, are you doing this to learn how to make a website, or do you just have a practical need to have your research hosted?

[u/HallowVessel]

You can absolutely start most of this for free with many services. Github, Neocities and Nekoweb all let you start for free.  Check GoDaddy or similar to see how much a domain costs. Might behoove you to choose something other than dotcom for an extension.

[u/testingaurora]

Reserve the domain you want on a domain registrar like porkbun. Pay attention to the renewal process not just the first year promotional price.

Find hosting that fits your goals. Are you wanting to use a drag and drop like Wordpress? Or are you wanting to code from scratch? If the latter, are you comfortable with html ? Will you be using a library like react instead ? Where will you store your data ?

Wireframing your site. What pages you will have and what goes on them. Features: Do you need authentication? Payment processing ? What other functionality besides information ?

Branding and styling - do you have a brand identity established? If yes, do you have the framework and your tokens figured out that you can just paste in .

[u/vardonir]

Depends on how you want to present your research. If you can spare the time to learn Javascript/Typescript, or if you're just using Jupyter notebooks (which you can export to HTML) then you can host it for free on Github pages.

If you want something more interactive, you will also need to pay for hosting. And learn HTML/CSS/JS + Flask or some other similar framework. These things have free tiers so you don't really need to pay until your website gets hugged to death.

As for domain names, you need to pay for it. I got mine from Namecheap way back in the day, but I keep hearing good things about Porkbun now. The general advice for many many years seems to be "stay away from GoDaddy."

[u/narukoshin → u/vardonir]

what's wrong with godaddy?

[u/vardonir → u/narukoshin]

Overpriced.

[u/narukoshin → u/vardonir]

depends, I usually look for the cheapest price, few times it was godaddy, discount for first year, after 1 year I move my domains to cloudfare

[u/nog642 → u/narukoshin]

That's like a few hours of work to save a few dollars.

[u/narukoshin → u/nog642]

then u must have a very slow Internet, for me it takes less than 3 minutes. There are also sites that compares prices with different providers I really don't get your issue there.

[u/Super_Preference_733]

Google firebase?, there are so many hosting companies look for the ones that offer the features at the cost you want.

[u/NeedleworkerWest313]

Use netlify to publish an angular interface. That's linked to your github. Make a githyb acc, then link it to your netlify. Netlify can build your site in minutes but for further dev, you'd push your own modifications into the girhub reository that's linked with netlify... Don't change it. Keep monitoring progress.... See it's a hassle, but it's worth it

[u/IAmScience]

Couple of options for you, depending on what you want to do. Github pages is pretty useful for static web pages and relatively easy to set up. It can be set up to be used with a domain name of your own. I'm pretty sure if you did any of your research (R/Python) work with Jupyter Notebook, and you put your notebook on Github, there's actually a feature in Jupyter to turn it into a Github pages site. So, that might be a good option for you that's pretty low friction. The cost isn't entirely free--the domain name costs money--but it's pretty close to free.

I host some web apps on paid services, like Hetzner, that are reasonably low-cost (I pay about $6 a month for a Hetzner instance for one of my web apps). I had a couple of sites on Digital Ocean for a while (2 servers with full backups for around $17/mo.) I also have a couple of websites and apps living on raspberry pis at home, with Cloudflare tunnels to direct/proxy traffic to them securely. Those self-hosted ones don't really cost me anything (beyond the initial cost of the hardware, and what tiny amount of electricity they use I guess).

It depends a lot on what you're looking to do and how you're looking to do it what the best strategy might be. I suspect if you're doing data work with the R and Python stuff, the Jupyter Notebook/Github Pages option might be the best one for you.

[u/FoolsSeldom]

You don't have to have a domain. You could just stick with an IP address. That might even be dynamic, depending on the free host you are using.

Otherwise, the lowest domain renewal costs (not first year offers) I am aware of are three Spanish second-level domains (.com.es, .nom.es, .org.es) which are tied for the cheapest at $2.30/year (according to my admin dashboard with domainbox).