I am trying to build a small website. I don’t know how to write HTML or JavaScript or CSS. I always hear sponsorships about SquareSpace from content creators such as TheLinuxExperiment. I understand that a website is public information but I want a builder that does not come with any unnecessary trackers, I.E. a noninvasive website. Are there any options?
I use Publii. It is a static site generator, and it’s open source. In my opinion, statically generated sites are superior for a lot of purposes. You can upload the generated site to any web hosting service. It doesn’t include any trackers. It actually only produces the content you ask it to.
It is also very easy to use. The interface is a lot like what you’d expect if you’re familiar with Wordpress or similar. If you have an existing Wordpress blog, you can import it and keep all your content.
My blog is generated by Publii. There is no code running on the server, it is all plain HTML. I run a self hosted tracking service myself, but I had to intentionally add it to the footer of the generated pages.
Depending on your use-case, maybe a static site generator could work for you? Something like Jekyll or Hugo. Both can be hosted for free on Github Pages (and I think Gitlab has something similar). While you still need some technical know-how in order to set it up, you can write your content in Markdown, which is a lot easier to write than HTML, and there are a lot of themes available out there you can use, so no need for CSS.
Hugo is quite nice and has lots of themes
Well technically WordPress is free open source and self hostable. I wouldn’t say it’s the best option but it probably is the most popular. Now if you want to use it then goodluck ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I generally steer people away from wordpress. Although the base system is reasonably secure, the plugin ecosystem is a security nightmare. The burden of maintenance is a real pain in the ass.
This isn’t really a con. Any extensible software is going to have poorly written plugins.
If you do your due dilligance when installing new plugins, this isn’t an issue (any more than any other CMS)
I generally agree with you, but on WordPress it can be quite hard to tell the good from the bad. I deal with it professionally, and it is a real nightmare. And as far as I can tell, WordPress takes no responsibility for quality assurance of plugins in their plugin library. They also don’t have an official system to warn when vunerabilities are found in those plugins. And most people running and designing WordPress websites don’t have the skills or time necessary to monitor and maintain. It’s an entire ecosystem ripe for exploitation.
I second this. Wordpress has by far the best ratio of “quality of the result + number of places you can get fully-supported turnkey hosting for it” to “amount of work and know-how you have to put into it” of anything I’m aware of. It has a huge supporting ecosystem of products that want your money in exchange for some particular trivial feature to add to your site, but the core is free and open source and privacy-respecting, and honestly quite well-engineered if you can agree to close your eyes and pretend it’s not made with PHP.
Tigertech and DigitalOcean are two quite good, although somewhat techie-focused, places you can get hosting for cheap if you don’t want to self-host.
I run a blog on hugo static website generator with TinaCMS (previously forestry.io). Forestry was more intuitive but TinaCMS can be self hosted and in active development so hopefully it’ll get there soon.
I did self host my own ghost website , what I didn’t like was that it was more like subscribe to my newsletter than a website… But I been trying to learn HTML to do my own simple website.
Depending on the size of the site, would it not be better to learn some simple HTML/CSS, and put it together yourself? That way, you know for sure it respects the user’s privacy.
I think they are looking for a code free solution. OP said that they don’t know HTML CSS or JavaScript.
They might have to learn some HTML depending on what they use, but that is pretty quick and easy to pick up for most people. CSS is a bit of a commitment comparatively, though.
If this is a one time work, I would recommend using WordPress with a free template. You have to learn WordPress, but it will be easier than learning HTML CSS js trio.
This might help you: https://www.tecmint.com/wysiwyg-html-editors/
Try different tools until you find one that suits you and learn with it until you are comfortable with the code, then you can use more advanced tools.
Jekyll (https://jekyllrb.com/) is cool if you don’t need comments, and it just needs very basic web hosting, no need to support stuff like PHP.
I recommen hugo
