Hello, This is my first website and I want some feedback from you guys. It’s very basic and I haven’t added much. just wanted to host something so I threw invidious and whoogle instance there. My ISP doesn’t provide a static IP so I had to host it on tor :( what else do you think I should host there? server spec: 15 year old computer with i3 first gen cpu.

  • Pyro@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Looks fine for your first website! I would change the colour of the text, though. Black on another dark colour is kinda harder to read. You can catch these problems by opening Firefox Dev Tools (F12), going to the Accessibility tab, and changing “Check for issues” to “Contrast”. It’ll list all the elements that have too low a contrast ratio.

  • Saigonauticon@voltage.vn
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    1 year ago

    Plain old static HTML is fine, and you can host it on a potato! Here are some design tips to keep it easy to read. None of them are objectively correct, and you are already doing some of them. They are just some suggestions as you move forward:

    1. Don’t use dark-on-dark fonts. Use near-black on off-white or at least something high contrast.
    2. Break up content using horizontal rules <hr> and various headers <h1 to h6> You can style both of them in css. This keeps things easy to find and read.
    3. Generally, do not center-align text if it is more than one line. If you need to display blocks of text side-by-side, put each in a container then left-align the text within those containers.
    4. Use a bigger font than you think is strictly necessary.
    5. My preference is to use sans-serif fonts. Google makes some good free ones. Sometimes I’ll go back and make titles serif only.
    6. Resize and compress your images. A bit higher resolution than you need but with lower quality is usually better than the reverse (for jpegs)
      • Saigonauticon@voltage.vn
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        1 year ago

        Haha, you got me there. So I guess you could more correctly say ‘a font with serif for titles only’.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Surprisingly, I can’t find that made as an actual usable font. I would have thought someone in font design would jump at the chance just for the fun of it.

    • notfromhere@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      They’re hosting on tor, they probably don’t want internet hosted fonts from Google. There are tons of CC licenses fonts available that are very useable.

    • tamal3@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I have seen multiple references to running software “on a potato” in the last hour. What in the world does it mean to run something on a potato? (Like… pickle electricity? That’s all I’ve got.) Please advise…

  • Agility0971@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    i disagree with the color of the text. too much contrast. may I suggest it being dark blue?

  • mvee@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    You could get a free oracle cloud instance https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/

    Free dns https://freedns.afraid.org/

    Then use letsencrypt to get free SSL certificates

    Then you’ll have a site that is secure and validates correctly with almost all web browsers.

    You could run services in oracle cloud, or use ssh or OpenVPN to proxy traffic to your home server, or other providers free tier machines

    • Toribor@corndog.uk
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      1 year ago

      I’d recommend Duck DNS over Free DNS these days.

      And Wireguard over OpenVPN.

      But yes, this is the easiest free way to stand up a solid website. Only other thing I’d add is to put sites and services behind a reverse proxy. Typically I’ve used Nginx but I’m quickly becoming a Caddy convert.

        • Toribor@corndog.uk
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          1 year ago

          FreeDNS requires you to log in to their website once a month or so to keep your DNS name active or they will revoke it. DuckDNS doesn’t require that. It’s free and it works. I set it up forever ago and never have to touch it, with FreeDNS I was risking losing my name or having my services go down if I missed their nag email.

    • Briongloid@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      No matter how many times I authenticate with my card, it never works and their support is rather frustratingly low quality.

  • meisme@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Cool but needs more contrast, it’s impossible to read for the visually impaired.

  • Mydayyy@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    For the IP issue: You can look into some service which automatically updates your domains DNS. It’s been a while but back then one of those was DynDNS, not sure if they still exist, but others surely do.

    • whoareu@lemmy.caOP
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      1 year ago

      I forgot to mention that I am also behind CGNAT. I bought a VPS for a while but couldn’t keep with the cost. Right now the cheapest way of hosting a website for me is through tor.

      • fraydabson@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        What about using cloudflare? You can setup a tunnel on the hosted server so cloudflare dns knows where to find you without your IP

          • fraydabson@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            They have a free plan that’s all I use. Go to cloudflare.com and register a free account. Point your dns/name servers to cloudflare. Then on your dashboard in cloudflare is a section for tunnels. It will walk you through how to install the tunnel. Then you should be good.

      • mvee@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Have you factored in your power costs? I never do :P buuut with older machines you get closer and closer to burning enough power to justify a hosting bill.

  • thermal_shock@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Even without a static, you can use services like ddns.net to auto update if your IP address changes with their app. Pretty simple setup, free version too.

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    This is great but also seeing the words “my first website” with links to services from post 2000 makes me feel ancient 😭

  • XTornado@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    For ip thing you should be able to use CloudFare Tunnel free service, works with dynamic IPs and without opening ports

    That said do not ask me for help, I haven’t used it.

    • Briongloid@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      It’s great with subdomains, I don’t think it works on root Domains but it’s still extremely easy to set up.

      I would recommend forcing HTTPS as well as creating a Page Rule enforcing strict SSL.

        • Briongloid@aussie.zone
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          1 year ago

          How do you get it to work in root domains? I’ve only ever been able to get subdomains to work.

          • SteveTech@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            I just did it like I would for a subdomain (with a CNAME).

            Cloudflare does leave this little message though: CNAME records normally can not be on the zone apex. We use CNAME flattening to make it possible. Learn more.

            • Briongloid@aussie.zone
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              1 year ago

              Thanks for the link, I had been trying for a while and one of my domains doesn’t even work now after I changed too many DNS records.

  • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    If it’s just going to be one page with thinks to other things, an idea for making it look nice is to have 4 semi transparent background squares with border radius, with an icon and text description of the service in the square. It could adapt to screen size so the squares would either be in a row, a column, or a grid.

    Of course, if you already had a vision I don’t want to interfere with that.