DIY - Website hosting/building?

DIY - Website hosting/building?
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Thanks for reviewing my threads. I did search for threads on above subject in this forum. Most of them are dated and url are broken. I am looking to build a website ground up .

Are you able share your journey of building a website and hosting it ?

What are the places to get a domain for less (in USA)?

What are the options to build/host the website that provide some templates (in USA)?

Thanks for sharing.

It's not too difficult to do, but you'll want to learn about security practices. Damn near everyone goes with the easy to deploy WordPress CMS (Content Management System). But, because this CMS is so damn popular there are attacks up the yin yang on it and bots that traverse the Internet looking for vulnerable WordPress driven websites. And the WordPress core files themselves don't even have to be vulnerable, it could be a plugin you installed. So if you decide to use WordPress, you'll want to pull out your favorite search engine and learn how to secure WordPress.

What I would do is run a test website on your computer using XMAPP or Wampserver. This isn't accessible to the outside world unless you make it so, and that is discouraged unless you configure things in a certain way, and I'd use pfSense... Better yet, make it private with ZeroTier. (nerding out) This software gives you what is called a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack without actually installing all the components necessary for a LAMP stack in Ubuntu or what ever. CentOS is now defunct and I guess Alma Linux (derived from Red Hat Linux) would be the next best thing, and it's compatible with cPanel. cPanel is just a GUI web interface to manage the ins and outs of your website server (shared or VPS (Virtual Private Server)) like mail, the database, PHP versions, etc without having to type Linux commands. An alternative (and probably cheaper) is DirectAdmin. There are some Linux web interfaces as well like Webmin. I haven't watched this video, but he mentions others. MySQL is pronounced "my sequel" and is a Structured Query Language for databases. PHP is a hypertext pre-processor language and is damn, damn fast.

Cheap domains? No such thing if you ask me. They're all pretty much the same price depending on the domain and TLD (Top Layer Domain) (.com or .net or .org are called a TLD). Now cheap hosting is more of an appropriate question. For that question I'd venture on over to Webhostingtalk.com and look around and ask.

Templates? Many hosters provide something called Softaculous in cPanel that allows for quite literally a one click install. So you want to install WordPress? Click a button. But, it's something you might not want to do because there's the possibility of issues with that verses a manual install. And a manual install is not hard at all and once you read about how to do it you then know how to backup and restore your website if need be. I can restore my websites in about 30 minutes. If you're talking about a flat file HTML website, then consider what I said here.

For a domain, IMO the best place to buy one is Cloudflare as they charge no markup and you have the added bonus of their DNS setup.

Cloudflare Registrar | New Domain Registration | Cloudflare

Cloudflare DNS setup can be done regardless of what domain provider you use. Just wanted to point that out.

I use Namesilo myself and enabling DNSSEC with Namesilo and CloudFlare was a snap. And Cloudflare makes it easy to enable HSTS. Once that's established you can get on the Chrome HSTS preload list. I'd stay far away from GoDaddy, and I'm not too fond of Namecheap either.

For ultra secure and private I can help with that as well. But that's something that requires a bit of effort on your part in more ways than one. And it means you no longer own the domain, but rather a third-party.

I'd just poke around in XAMPP or Wampserver on your computer to get to know the ins and outs of how websites function and what not. Then migrate to live when you're sure you can handle it all. Believe me there is lots to know. Many people just dive in, and you can, but it's kinda like maintaining a boat on the high seas. There is a lot to know beyond just taking the helm and set sailing.

If you really want to learn about a VPS I'd first install something like Ubuntu (not a great OS anymore in my opinion) in VMware Workstation Player and install a LAMP stack in there absent of XAMPP. Now you can explore webmin, iptables, changing the default SSH port and FTP ports You can install Fail2Ban if you wish and lots of other things. Now you could go with a Linode VPS and go beyond and learn Kubernetes and Docker and Apache's Guacamole. I know this sounds like a ton of nerd crap, but if you're really into it and are wiling to pull out your search engine and research each term I just gave you'll learn in no time. HA! You could also learn about ACLs and cloud computing in AWS. Using the aforementioned reverse proxy Cloudflare you can use their "Workers" and other cool stuff.

Gone are the days of flat file HTML driven websites. Everything is massively dynamic, utilizes the "cloud" to segregate elements as well as edge servers for performance and even CORS configuration. It's a trip. LOL