Recommendations for a personal website/other online presence?

[Aes]

My requirements:

• Mobile AND desktop friendly viewing, posting, and editing. Basic formatting is fine. I just want it readable.
• Free very much preferred.
• I don’t care about domain names, etc. This isn’t for business, just my many and varied hobbies.
• Actual customizable page/post organization and tagging, including searchable tags and the built-in ability to filter your own original posts.
• Viewable to people who don’t have an account or are not otherwise logged in. It seems like every social media site except tumblr does this now and I hate it. I myself am not always logged in and I don’t want a wannabe paywall keeping non-members from seeing my stuff. Believe it or not, not everyone has a facebook.
• For contrast, I was going to use tumblr for  this, but their utter lack of organization is atrocious. A few dozen reblogs in and it’s impossible to find my own original posts anymore, and the search is a joke. Xkit would be great if whoever is in charge of tumblr didn’t insist on breaking it every other month for some superficial “improvement”. No I don’t care about the color scheme of my stupid dash, just give me dark mode and I’m happy. Of course, a functioning website would be nice too…
• Able to be backed up offline would be very nice.
• Also, I like easy to use and minimal fuss, but I am also a computer nerd so technical isn’t a hurdle if it’s worth the trouble to set up. That being said, I hate coding, I don’t even know html/css/web anything, and I really don’t want to learn just for  this. I will if I absolutely have to though.

C&C Always welcome.

[Yorky Administrator Ormskirk]

Well, I use Weebly but there are many other sites which have easy to use formats. Sadly I am locked out of my website which is shared with the local historical society but it was easy to set up.

Doug

We must leave our mark on this world

[sandman_us]

I believe what you are looking for is Content Management System (CMS).  And there are quite a few out there.  These systems can provide blog entries, images, and even videos.  They do require a website and are available through most web hosting companies.  You may be able to find a reseller that will work with you on setting up a CMS through his web hosting company, but where you are the primary administrator of your site.

A lot of web hosting companies will offer a CMS with just one domain name, some email accounts, and most now have online backups.  When shopping for a web hosting company, make sure you find one with good (really good) customer support.  There are quite a few web hosting companies that are happy to sign you up and then rarely support you if you have any questions or problems.

Regarding the actual CMS, have you looked at WordPress.  It’s very popular, has numerous free themes (and yes there are some that require a fee), very flexible with blog posts and images, complete with tags and search capabilities.  It’s open to the Internet public (as are most CMS) and you can configure with or without replies to your posts.  Most web hosting companies support WordPress, and WordPress  itself can host you.

Other than WordPress, take a look at Pubvana, Serendipity, DotClear, and b2evolution.

Hope this helps!

[ZenDruid]

For simple image hosting, I use imgur which is free.  I use it for my paintings right now.  It requires a username, mine is Medoart and a password.  It’s easy to upload from my picture files and download onto a WetCanvas page.  You can see mine here:

https://medoart.imgur.com/all/

I also have a website, down below, with Zenfolio, but it’s mainly for photographers who want to sell pictures.  And it costs about $100 a year.

I also store pictures here on Wet Canvas.  Go your avatar, top right of the page, scroll down to Media, go left to Photos and open the page.  You can put your pictures in there.  Mine looks like this:

https://www.wetcanvas.com/members/zendruid/media/photo/

ZD

 

 

If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else. Yogi Berra

https://doncraigphotography.zenfolio.com/f755023159

[Ohmo]

Eleven months later, and resources haven’t changed much, so I’ll revive the zombie. ?‍♂️

Since “free” is so high on the list, I suggest you check out WordPress.

However, if specific information as the purpose of the site/page would be, better and more specific suggestions could be offered.  Just a wordy way to ask, “For what will it be used?” ?

Skill is nothing more than talent practiced relentlessly.

[philipgoetz]

http://www.bulbapp.com

Adobe Spark which is now adobe creative cloud express

sites.google.com

[Aes]

Haven’t been on here for awhile. Kinda gave up, tbh. I have poked around wordpress a bit. It certainly is customizable, at least on desktop. Haven’t tried to mess with it on mobile yet. Can I make templates for it, so I don’t have to keep rebuilding the same layout every post, or is that a paid feature?

“For what will it be used?”

My use is just posting pics, video, and text. Nothing fancy.

C&C Always welcome.

[Yorky Administrator Ormskirk]

If you are not planning to sell from your site I would suggest you try Weebly free which has templates and is easy to put together.

Doug

We must leave our mark on this world

[Ohmo]

Aes wrote:

Haven’t been on here for awhile. Kinda gave up, tbh. I have poked around wordpress a bit. It certainly is customizable, at least on desktop. Haven’t tried to mess with it on mobile yet. Can I make templates for it, so I don’t have to keep rebuilding the same layout every post, or is that a paid feature? “For what will it be used?” My use is just posting pics, video, and text. Nothing fancy.

Yes, there are templates for WordPress (and Weebly, and many other free or relatively inexpensive hosting services).  WordPress is the best known because it is the biggest (more users than any other site).

This link is to a random page I found that compares WordPress and Weebly.  Not a lot of difference between the two, or among the many other hosting services that can be found – W & WP are just two of the most popular sites.  That said, WP has a dot org space [ wordpress.org ]with all the documentation and help articles where Weebly is reported to have excellent customer service.

If you decide to create an online presence, please come back and let us know what you chose and a link to it.

 

Skill is nothing more than talent practiced relentlessly.

[Author]

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