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alright if it's game updates you want and don't want to deal with the rest of my bullshit then follow @aftermidnight okay? okay.
@beardalaxy @aftermidnight I still need to a find a name for my one man studio.
Anyway, if you need a website, I could help write an HTML template.
@xianc78 @aftermidnight hey I appreciate that man, thanks! I'll let you know if I need help. When the time comes I think I'll be able to make my own though :) I THINK lol.
@beardalaxy @aftermidnight For the love of God, please don't use drag-and-drop shit like Wix, Weebly, or SquareSpace. Though Wordpress.com might be okay if you want a blog-style site (it's just a host that uses Wordpress as a back-end).
If you want a free-host that actually allows you to use HTML, there is NeoCities and HelioHost. NeoCities only supports static websites (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), but HelioHost supports server-side scripting, so you can even include things like forums or wikis if you wanted to. It also provides email hosting, so you can have an email address with your site's (sub)-domain. I would recommend HelioHost just for the email feature alone, but it's one of those services that requires you to login every few weeks or they will terminate your account.
@xianc78 I was initially thinking of just going from scratch and making a really dead-simple site, maybe even self-hosting it for the lulz. I saw that porkbun offers a pretty dang good deal where you can pay $4/month for weebly hosting though. Normally it's quite a bit more than that. Is there a good reason beyond "it's a big stupid company" that I shouldn't use weebly?
I'll look into helio though for sure.
@beardalaxy You can still host a static-site on HelioHost, but it also provides email hosting, which is nice, imo.
@beardalaxy I would also like to add that a lot of people use something like PHP just to be able to include a navigation bar or a footer that they can update without updating every single page of the site. Granted, you can do the same thing with a static-site using JavaScript, but it will run client-side, meaning that it won't appear if the client has JS disabled.
@xianc78@gameliberty.club @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club better to use client-side code than rely on PHP server-side imo, but admittedly i hate PHP.
also: there's no reason updating multiple pages of a static site would mandate multiple code changes. static site generators like Jekyll and Hugo (among others) provide templating languages for this purpose, and these also tend to drastically reduce the amount of HTML one needs to write by hand.
@otokonoko @beardalaxy I'm well aware of static-site generators, but I want to keep things simple for beard. If anything, I could write a basic PHP application for him. If it is done through something like Jekyll, he would have to constantly use the command-line which might be tedious for him. (Note that he is an RPG Maker dev) And you also have to still reupload the modified version of every page even with a static site generator. Having a server-side script for things like a navigation bar and/or footer means that only one file needs to be reuploaded.
@xianc78@gameliberty.club @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club what? no, you don't have to constantly use the command line. just push the code to GitHub and use GitHub Pages in that case. can't be any harder than coding the site manually and uploading to Neocities---especially given VSCodium has fantastic support for git and can integrate with version control even without using the command line. in any case, i was just offering suggestions. it's fine if he chooses to do it another way, to be sure.
@xianc78@gameliberty.club @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club not that i recommend GitHub, of course, but if we're talking about ease with which a given tool can be used, Neocities offers an illusion of ease compared to CI/CD paired with a static site builder. and there are more censorship-resistant git providers such as GitGud that offer CI/CD in any case.
@beardalaxy I just don't like how these drag and drop hosts add unnecessary bloat. They add JavaScript from big-tech sites like Google and Facebook and in some cases, disabling them will make the site unviewable.
@xianc78 my current weebly site seems to work without scripts perfectly fine, actually. It's very simple. Obviously embeds don't work but that's to be expected. The rest of the site works just fine.
@beardalaxy I think it's better not to have that stuff at all. Blocking scripts is kind of a band-aid solution. Yeah, embeds need those scripts but that's more of the exception rather than the rule. Weebly even uses Google Fonts when the default web fonts are all you ever need.
Didn't you say that you learned HTML in high school? I know that Weebly does have an HTML editor, but from what I can tell, the editors on those sites only edit the body. Why not just use something like NeoCities or Heliohost instead? The only reason I could see why was the blog.
@xianc78 yeah weebly does have an html editor, you can do a pretty decent amount of stuff with it. I removed the footer and replaced it with my own so there's no weebly branding at all even though I don't pay for it xD
It fits my needs, more or less. I definitely could code a simple website, but I'm already late on actually making my game and I'm a solo dev so I just want to take an easier route most likely xD
@beardalaxy I just need some experience to put on my resume (preferably back-end included).
@beardalaxy@gameliberty.club @xianc78@gameliberty.club Porkbun and Namesilo are your best bets for domain registration, though the latter has better rates for cryptocurrency and less of a mandate on ID verification. other than that they're both pretty decent. Kyun! is my recommended hosting provider for censorship-resistance and privacy. the VMs on offer are all relatively inexpensive, and they don't restrict any ports so you can even host a mailserver if you want email there (or else a FOSS mail forwarding service to an existing email address). they only accept Monero at present for payments, though, so that's worth noting if you prefer to pay in fiat (though i recommend not doing that given how censorship-happy banks are these days and the massive privacy benefits of Monero). both of the domain registrars mentioned are fairly censorship-resistant, as well. @disabled@shota.house maintains a good article on censorship-resistant hosting. note that Kyun actually doesn't require a username anymore and instead randomly generates an account ID, much like Mullvad VPN. aside from that, i think the article is still up-to-date. most static hosting platforms like Neocities are censorious, so that's good to keep that in mind as well. weebly is a bit "meh", but i feel that way about all site builders, in truth.
@otokonoko @beardalaxy @disabled I don't think freezepeach matters here because this is about a site for an indie game studio here and not some imageboard, fedi instance, or alt-social media site. And using a VPS for a small indie game site seems a bit overkill to me.
@xianc78@gameliberty.club @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club @disabled@shota.house i don't know what the content is of any games that might be developed, but keep in mind that indie devs have indeed been targeted for harassment lately. there's zero reason not to take your privacy seriously these days. besides: the cost quoted for that weebly site is barely less than that of a Gaki VM from Kyun. why not get your money's worth?
@xianc78@gameliberty.club @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club @disabled@shota.house not to mention: talking about "freezepeach" as if free speech is a terrible concept while using gameliberty.club is truly ironic.
@otokonoko @beardalaxy @disabled I'm not saying that it's a terrible concept. I'm just saying that it's not particularly important for a simple game studio site that probably isn't going to be censored.
@xianc78 @otokonoko @beardalaxy If you live in a nice house in a relatively safe area. Does that mean it isn’t particularly important to lock your doors at night, since you’re unlikely to be stolen from?
Not trying to influence you or anyone in any particular direction, just don’t see why one wouldn’t choose options that respect your right to speech and privacy if given the option. Especially if they are comparably priced to the alternatives.
@disabled @beardalaxy @otokonoko Sure, it's a good selling point, and I would probably pick the free speech option, but all the freezepeach hosts only accept crypto payments. I don't know if beard has any experience with that, especially XMR which seems to be more tricky to set up, at least from my experience.
Privacy is also good, but beard has made his real name public on his itch.io page. Though, using crypto could probably prevent more sensitive-information from being leaked, in the event of a data breach.
@xianc78 @beardalaxy @otokonoko Monero isn’t any more difficult to get into than any other crypto, I’d actually consider it rather easy. Anyway, with services like Trocador if you have 1 type of crypto you can pay in Monero, though there will be fees involved depending on which crypto you are converting from. Some crypto can be very, very expensive when it comes to fees. (I’m looking at you :eth.: 
) but most are not absolutely insane and unreasonable as Ethereum.
Anyway if you’re looking for a host which accepts fiat, I’d highly suggest Buyvm they have multiple locations, are very free speech friendly, and they’re not going to harvest your data like it’s a corn crop. They’re also exceptionally affordable and allow payments in fiat.
@disabled@shota.house @xianc78@gameliberty.club @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club for fiat payments: BuyVM is 100% your best bet at present, agreed.
@xianc78 @disabled @otokonoko yes, my "real name" lol.
I have literally 0 experience with crypto lol.
And yeah the games I plan on making are not offensive or controversial. I mean someone might flip out over some tiny little thing but I think for the majority of people it won't matter. I mean hell, this game and my next 2 I have planned have female protagonists.
I just like to say funny stuff on social media. I don't want my games to go into that "anti-woke" category, I just want them to be games.
@beardalaxy@gameliberty.club @xianc78@gameliberty.club @disabled@shota.house yeah, i totally get it! focusing on being anti-anything in art rather than just making art is a pitfall anyway. people these days just... idk. it's like they can't just be satisfied with deciding not to play a game they find some aspect of unappealing; instead, they have to make it into an ideological struggle. right wing reactionary games tend to overcorrect, in many cases. "i just want them to be games" is 100% the right approach. good luck!
@otokonoko @xianc78 @disabled thanks, I appreciate it :)
@otokonoko @xianc78 @disabled I actually already have a porkbun account so we're gucci
@xianc78 I was thinking about neocities too, because at least for now all I really want is a static website.