Ask HN: What is the best way to quickly launch a website?

21 points by mr_coffee 7 years ago | 14 comments

Hi all, I have some programming experience (mostly with Python) and would like to launch a product quickly to get user feedback, without spending weeks/months learning web frameworks like react, JS, node etc. Don't get me wrong, I am happy to spend the time to learn this, but before I do, I would like to see if I can get some user traction.

All I really need is a basic page that can host data and display a few bar charts and text (ideally in a UX pleasing way).

I thought of a simple Wordpress site, but thought I would ask here in case I am missing something better.

Does anyone have some good recommendation on what might be the best solution?

Thanks

swaggyBoatswain 7 years ago |

There's really two main options

- Single static page (netlify as host or similar)

- Wordpress (sitegrounds as host)

If you want premade templates to just modify some images / cut out content, I would use themeforest

Specifically these links

https://themeforest.net/category/marketing/landing-pages?sor...

https://themeforest.net/category/marketing/unbounce-landing-...

Technically all you really want is an email signup link at the end

laurentl 7 years ago |

You can try sites such as wix or strikingly which offer a wysiwyg editor and allow you to build your website without knowing the first thing about HTML. Saves you the hassle of hosting your own Wordpress or static pages (although S3 and others work great for that), will allow you to do some basic integration with G Analytics and so forth, and will take you all of 5 minutes to set up.

marc_io 7 years ago |

Use Publii (https://getpublii.com) to easily create a static site on your computer and Netlify (https://www.netlify.com) for hosting. All free and fast to setup.

anotheryou 7 years ago |

Honestly: I'd buy a good base design with WYSIWYG builder support.

Something like https://elementor.com/ for wordpress or even go straight for squarespace (not sure how expensive that is though).

I feel like we are finally at a point where you don't have to know CSS anymore for pretty static websites. At my job we are 50% devs, but marketing and design does the website all on their own with some wordpress builder plugin and it's alright.

stadeschuldt 7 years ago |

If you know Python you could check out Lektor: https://www.getlektor.com/ I has been built be Mitsuhiko, who also built Flask, Jinja2 and Werkeug. Lektor is a static content management system. You can then host your site on S3 or Netlify.

viraptor 7 years ago |

> a basic page that can host data and display a few bar charts and text (ideally in a UX pleasing way).

That sounds like a static site. Unless you need some interaction per user, I'd recommend buying a ready theme, adding the content and uploading that to S3. Ignore WordPress and frameworks unless you really have a need for them.

mr_coffee 7 years ago | |

Thanks - I had thought of something like that. What do you mean though by buying a ready theme?

viraptor 7 years ago | | |

You mentioned learning react and some other frontend tech. If you want a quick website, ignore those too and buy some theme with a known base (bootstrap). Then change the contents only, and not what it looks like.

DoreenMichele 7 years ago |

If you are okay with Google, you can do it on blogspot. It's completely free if you do it yourself, or inexpensive if you hire a consultant to help you with the set up to cut down on the learning curve and get something nice immediately.

ilikeatari 7 years ago |

One of the other options not mentioned is Squarespace. I launched few sites that look good and I liked the design esthetic.

anthony_barker 7 years ago |

hugo single page website with signups using typeform.

9wzYQbTYsAIc 7 years ago |

You could get free Google Cloud or AWS compute resources, a free or cheap domain name, and load up a simple Python web server.

cm2012 7 years ago |

Weebly is great. Also a YC company.

dshanahan 7 years ago |

Use carrd.co.