Makin' a Website

[tegan]

Not gonna lie: this is going to have straight-up porn on it. I need to do a proper portfolio at some point for other jobs, but right now I've found a porn comic site hiring full-time creators and I want to have a portfolio of work available to show them. That's why I was looking to host it on its own and not on tumblr or something, but I can probably just do a tumblr if I use an appropriate theme, flag everything as NSFW, and get a nice domain name to redirect to it. I can do that, right?

 

(disappointingly, the .xxx domain name that I wanted is already taken. My chosen pseudonym turns out to also be a large company that makes baby products. Whoops!)

 

Gotta say, I'm kind of surprised at how nobody recommends Squarespace, considering how heavily it's been advertised on Thumbs and the Bombcast.

 

 

Would you be able to make your own site with wysiwyg editors like Micrsoft Frontpage (LONG DEAD!) or Dreamweaver Tegan? I used Dreamweaver for my site because I have no god damn idea what I am doing but it works well enough.

 

I feel that I know or can relearn enough HTML, CSS, and Javascript to make something functional. I wish tumblr let you do more with HTML; I already have to pull out all the stops to get images to work correctly on Let's Talk About Comics (good thing I never update it).

[Merus]

Listen, I'd recommend it but I recognise it's too expensive for someone in the position you've told us you're in. I'll probably use it for a personal site next time I get the urge to have a personal site and have a proper job.

[shammack]

I use nearlyfreespeech.net for hosting. It's nice for me and my extremely low-traffic site because you only pay for the bandwidth you actually use. I think I put in like $15 once, several years ago, and have yet to have to pay more. Their policies are fine with porn as far as I can tell, as long as you have the rights to it.

[Pepyri]

Web dev here(Rails/Ember/cetera)(not trying to be a dick and claim any authority, I am not an expert in web hosts, just using it to qualify how odd it is to still say what I do). You can actually do a hell of a lot with a tumblr page, you just have to get familiar with how they want to pull from their API.

 

I personally though really would recommend Squarespace. I used to use them back with v4-6 of their stuff, and v7 is actually pretty bosstacular. $8/mo is a pittance for what you get- they've got all the tracking/SEO shit all set up for you(believe me when I can say that professionals lose days/weeks to getting shit set up as well as they have it out of the box), and you can do the rest of the HTML fun yourself. The only time I wouldn't recommend a SquareSpace site is if you're wanting to get serious about your Javascript interactions, in which case you get into serious development land.

 

I mean, for what you're doing, yeah $8/mo seems like asking a lot, but if you were going to buy a domain and otherwise host yourself from there, the cheapest host I've seen is Digital Ocean, and what you get for $5 from them is seriously great. Except then, and on any of these hosts, you have to:

 

• Fully spec out/set up your HTML from the ground up
• Set up a web server
• Figure out how to insert tracking
• Lock down the server so no one hacks you and subtly injects malicious code in places
• Keep software updated all over the place for a huge variety of reasons(and I guarantee there'll be things you're unaware of that have security fixes that you don't think to update, because that's always the case, even as pros)

And even after all of those, the site will still be slower than a Squarespace site, your larger file size images can cause a slowdown for other people using your site(i.e. you should have a CDN), and, you personally have to think about SEO.

 

At this point, I think between Tumblr and Squarespace, no non-professionals should be using anything else because at that point you just get into realms of "Yeah I'm saving $3 a month but I have to spend an extra 2-10 hours a month doing things with my website that don't have to do with the reason I put the damn thing up".

 

 

Edit: You could use Amazon's free tier, but keep in mind that's only for 1 year. After that you pay, though it'd likely be very minor. However it still has all of the above caveats.

[brkl]

Angelfire?

[Codicier]

I went through setting up a small site (for a forum) a while back & thrik offered this advice regarding hosting which I'll post here

As for hosting, in all honesty you should be able to find innumerable decent options if you have like $10 a month tops. WebHostingTalk can be a good place to find reputable hosts rather than the shit you'll likely find when using Google (where almost every review site is full of paid-for BS).

Future Hosting is great if you have a bit more and want a managed virtual server (should you hit that point). Gandi Simple Hosting is great if you know what you're doing and don't need email hosting, etc — it's basically a pre-configured virtual server which is very fast.

Regarding the 'sensitive' nature of your content and your desire to work under a alias.

Have you tried approaching any of the more prominent web comics creators who do 'erotic' side projects for advice on this all? People like Phil Foglio (Girl Genius) Josh Lesnick (Girly) or Spike Trotman (Templar Arizona). The later in particular is probably worth looking into if you're not already familiar with her work.

I'm sure there's more than just those three they are just the only creators I know do some erotic who are on my reading list (apart from the blessed Trudy Cooper of Oglaf)

Finally I know Hower lets you hide who the domain is registered to so if that's something you're after its another tick in its favour.

[dibs]

Obviously we can't help you unless you post some samples tegan. Obviously.

[Justin Leego]

(disappointingly, the .xxx domain name that I wanted is already taken. My chosen pseudonym turns out to also be a large company that makes baby products. Whoops!)

 

Wow who knew that Nature Diaps had such a diversified product base

[SuperBiasedMan]

Wow who knew that Nature Diaps had such a diversified product base

 

:tup:

[undermind9]

i might be a little/too late to the conversation but what about smugmug? my wife uses it for her photography hosting, actually switching this coming weekend for her whole website

 

currently on Zenfolio which has been good enough, i think fairly inexpensive too, these are again photography hosting focused...but if its portfolio upload may be just as good

[JonCole]

Found out about this site that does direct price comparison for domain registration, thought it might be of use to people who every now and then ask where to buy that stuff - https://www.domcomp.com/

 

That's to say nothing about customer service/quality of service, of course, but if you want the best price it's helpful.