alt Hacker NewsIt's pretty sad how there doesn't seem to be any decent free options for websites which are easy to use. Squarespace and such cost a fortune which isn't worth it if you aren't trying to run a full ecommerce site. Plenty of services offer free hosting of static content but don't have any way a normal person can use them. Having to use a static site generator is too hard for non programmers.
I'm just surprised we haven't seem some app that can act like a wordpress admin page but generating a static output you can host for free or very cheap somewhere.
Replies
Google Sites exists. Buy a domain, point it at a free Google site. So easy a religion major can make a site that looks pretty decent (ha ha, only serious; I thought he'd used Wordpress at first) for just the cost of domain registration.
A webapp or gui WYSIWYG static generator with basic git support abstracted away would go far for many. Just let it push to some private repo which cloudflare pages or similar would deploy off of.
It really feels like the only part of a non-static site most want is an editor. I absolutely loathe the matter but I do see why some restaurants only maintain a facebook page for their online presence.
> I'm just surprised we haven't seem some app that can act like a wordpress admin page but generating a static output you can host for free or very cheap somewhere.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44391535
(I'm not affiliated with it)
That’s what I’ve been working on for the last few years: https://palacms.com (MIT) Not ready to announce the V3 RC yet (need to fill out the starter sites) but it’s working well if you wanna give it a spin - runs & deploys on Railway’s free tier.
This is exactly what we're trying to build with https://github.com/accretional/statue - you can email me or hit me up on Linkedin to get early access to our free static site hosting (which our new site for the project at https://statue.dev runs on, and which will Soon™ have a public-facing product doing exactly what you just asked for)
Basically you'll be able to edit the markdown for your site in a souped up version of our lightly reskinned vscode IDE at https://brilliant.mplode.dev and instantly publish/preview the changes in the same browser tab in a pane. Brilliant comes with a full Linux environment running in a container on our cloud platform, and building a Statue static site is already a one-command operation. The little UI we're working on let's nontechnical people skip that and just edit files and click buttons to make changes and publish it, though.
Here's a one-liner that will get you an entire static site with content (not the landing page yet, though) you can edit via markdown:
yes | npx sv create . --template minimal --types ts --no-add-ons --install npm && npm install statue-ssg && npx statue init && npm install && npm run dev
Honestly, there are some easier ways out there now, although of course no solution is perfect.
For non-technical people I'd recommend the Hostinger Website Builder, Obsidian Quartz or Astro Starlight.
Although as a front-end dev I'd choose building a custom page with Astro, which has now become much easier though with good templates available + LLM assistance.
I wrote a comparison of less-technical ways to build a website here with more details: https://webdev.bryanhogan.com/start/ways-to-build/
I’m building something like this…
NextJS + Git + Vercel.
Have you looked at micro.blog? Plans start at $1 per month.
how about something like feather.so? publish a website / blog from your Notion...
haven't used it, but looks like a great idea!
Squarespace is like $20/mo for a basic site promoting your Brick and Mortar business. That includes domain, hosting, and a template/CMS. It's not that pricey.