yuuniverse

Building My Own Website, take 2

I wrote a small guide back in 2022 about what kind of options are available as the Internet gets more and more hostile towards niche spaces - especially the queer and adult ones that I often inhabit. This is an updated guide because I want to keep any content that was originally hosted on my old blog the same for archival purposes.

This will be a W.I.P. - it currently is missing links cause I'm out right now.

Why Did I Need My Own Website?

I guess technically I didn't, but I wanted my own space of web to host my content after a lot of stuff I created got yanked by various webhosts and fears that my threads on twitter might disappear as well.

Having my own site is really nice cause I can be unrepentantly me. I can put copies of my stories that aren't "polished" enough for me to put on ao3, I can put my OC's history in all their full, "problematic" glory and just. Not have to worry about anything. People can maybe email me if they wanna yell, but I don't need to put a guestbook or any other way for others to interact with my content if I don't fucking want to.

I can make it visible for anyone to see, or hide the links that you'll need a password or the exact URL to find it. Having my own site gives me control that I don't get on twitter or tumblr or other social media sites.

It's also a bit of vanity ngl. Having yuu.gay and yuu.omg.lol is a point of pride. Also I can then use my site urls as handles on bluesky.

What If I Don't Want to Pay?

There's certainly choices that are "free"! Neocities is probably the one I would suggest most, but you got other options too, like Wix, 000webhost, Weebly, or Wordpress. In the case of free sites your url will normally be something like username.website.com or website.com/username. Most of them use drag and drop which helps make sites usable on any device but leaves much to he desired in the customization department.

The big thing is that you REALLY need to check their Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) and Terms of Service (TOS) to see what you can/'t post there. Neocities is probably the most permissible - its mostly 🔞 friendly but does not allow age play or lolisho content. Sites hosted on WordPress or Wix can't have NSFW and Tumblr is... well. waves hands. You might get away with it, but if your content gets reported to them, they might yank your site (maybe with notification and enough time to save your stuff, sometimes not).

It sucks. Sometimes the nsfw is purely business (coughpayment processorscough) but sometimes it's ideological which hella sucks.

Free/mium Webhosts

So How Did I Do This?

Well this is specifically how I set my sites up. I'm gonna be real with you - I'm lazy af and am unwilling to even try messing with cloud servers and deploying from command lines. I just want a panel and something I can just upload some html files and go. This guide reflects that.

Getting a Domain

I want to preface this section by saying this is entirely optional. Some of these options I'll detail below do not require for you to have a dedicated domain or may have domain names as part of the service (I'll try to Note that when it applies)

I currently purchase and renew through PorkBun which I found is cheaper than other places.

I purchased my first domain from IWantMyName which was the ONLY place I found that allowed me to pre-order yuu.gay but it was also hecking expensive. After a year or so I moved to PorkBun. You can 110% purchase a domain on one registrar and move it to a different one! You just gotta wait around ~60 days and pay a transfer fee. When you do a transfer you normally are paying for an additional year of owning a domain (i.e. if you buy from registrar Y and move to registrar P and you have 6 months remaining, when you transfer you'll have 18 months of service left).

As of writing (30 march 2024), I currently own "yuu.gay" ($26.24/yr), "yuu.monster" ($10.79/yr), "yuu.wiki" ($20.06/yr), and "yuuniverse.xyz" ($10.79/yr). With the exception of yuu.gay (which was purchased years ago when the .gay TLD became available) I bought these through porkbun for $1 to $2/each because there's often sales and deals on their site when you first set up a new domain. The renewal price fluctuates a bit (some years my renewal price for yuu.gay was slightly higher) and depends on your TLD.

Other Registrars I Have Opinions(tm) On

One Note: there's these things called "Handshake URLs" which are sites that use a .(something) that isn't one of the "official" top level domains (TLDs). You might be tempted by their cheap prices (SOME of them are cheap. These domains Namecheap has a larger variety and tends to be cheaper) and cute names (omfg do I really wish I could have gotten yuu.ism) but they're weird and run on blockchain tech, no guarantee that they won't suddenly disappear, and might not be possible to access for most people unless they use a special browser to resolve them so uh... buyer beware? (Note: I'm about to test this on cynderhost so wish me luck lmao)

How Do I Host This?

This is the important part! I'll start with hosts I have used / currently am using and then some reviews/notes about other hosts. None of these are affiliate links, opinions are my own, I'm not getting paid for this.

Any Other Guides / Sites to Help?

I'll update this list periodically but here's some sources.

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