Alternatives to neocities

[Rubbereon]

Since there are known problems with neocities and the direction its taken I figured this thread would be helpful to some peeps.

The ones I know of:

• Nekoweb
• Ichi.city (I tried to sign up for it a few months ago and it wouldn't work I dunno why, so this may be a bust.)
• Worlio (I should note the admin is a tad bit problematic, but I don't wanna harp on about it because I want to leave this behind instead of forever holding a grudge against him. I have an account on this one, but I haven't logged into it since I reckon 2 years now)
• Teacake
• Heliohost

The alternative should have the minimum requirements:

• Be free (or cheap)
• Be community-focused, preferably have some kind of social feature like neocities

[Dan Q]

A bit different/radical, maybe, but for some this might be a good option:

• GitHub Pages

I host a few websites on GitHub Pages, including FreeDeedPoll.org.uk (repo), Abnib (repo), Dan Q's Things (repo), BBC News RSS Feeds (that don't suck) (repo), Best Resolution (repo), <embed-html> (repo), DnDle (repo), Beige Buttons (repo), TRRTL (repo), ChangeYourStarSign.com (repo), The Green (repo), Sour Grapes (repo), EGXchange.org (repo), RockMonkey.org.uk (repo), Cheating Hangman (repo), and Axe Feather 2021 (repo). To name but a few (is it possible that I have too many websites?).

The biggest downside is that to qualify for the free tier, your site has to be open-source (i.e. a public repository). But for those of you making static sites (and many varieties of SSGs, which you can have GitHub automate for you!), you're effectively open source anyway thanks to the "View Source" feature in every web browser. (You can still enforce your copyright.) The only reason this should be an impediment is if you have any kind of secret content (i.e. at not-published URLs).

But other than that, it's great, and I'd be happy to throw together a tutorial on it if anybody would be interested (because using GitHub Pages can be a bit different than some of the other options listed above).

[Dan Q]

See also https://wiki.melonland.net/webhost_collection !

[sunnyp4rk]

I mentioned them in the PHP neocities thread but I'm going to thrown leprd.space and Altervista back in here. Both have PHP support.

Also, I don't know if social features should necessarily be a selling point for a webhost. I have my own qualms with the fact Neocities has the status updates, but that's a topic for a thread on it's own lol (or maybe even a blog post).

[arcus]

Hosts I've recommended before:

• Nearly Free Speech (Openly anti-fascist)
• Web 1.0 Hosting (For older style sites, no NSFW policy as far as I can tell)
• Marigold Town (Has a small town theme, 2 GB limit, unsure if donations can expand that, worth asking?)
• ichi (No paid plans, very limited storage, SFW only, listing for the sake of it)
• Comic Fury (For comics, a pretty popular host, has automatic RSS feeds)

A bit different/radical, maybe, but for some this might be a good option:

• GitHub Pages

Recommending against this. Github is owned by Microsoft and uses code uploaded to their servers for AI training. Codeberg Pages and Sourcehut are similar and don't have those issues.

[Dan Q]

Recommending against this. Github is owned by Microsoft and uses code uploaded to their servers for AI training. Codeberg Pages and Sourcehut are similar and don't have those issues.

Fair argument. I should already be shopping-around for alternatives; thanks for the list!

[Adam]

Another potential alternative is hosting a site yourself. The exact process will vary a bit depending on your internet service, but if you have a small computer you can leave on 24/7, you can usually host your own webpage.

It costs almost nothing (besides electricity) and it frees you from any specific web-hosting company.

The downsides are that your website goes offline if you lose your internet connection, you need to learn some basics about web-hosting, and there's no customer service department if you want to complain about your experience.

It's not for everyone, but if you want maximum freedom at minimal cost, self-hosting is hard to beat.

[Dan Q]

Another potential alternative is hosting a site yourself. The exact process will vary a bit depending on your internet service, but if you have a small computer you can leave on 24/7, you can usually host your own webpage.

A great tip (and something I routinely do, too!), with a few caveats:

• You either need a static IP address (which don't come as standard from most ISPs) that you can point your domain name(s) at, or to use a dynamic DNS service (which might lock you in to "awkward" domain names or else paying for a premium feature) or else implement your own tool to do this using your domain registrar/DNS provider's API.
• It doesn't work if you've unlucky enough to have an ISP that implements Carrier-Grade NAT (where several customers "share" a public-facing IP address: connections like these are more-common in some parts of the world than others)
• Similarly, it doesn't work as well if your ISP only offers you a public IPv6 address (this'll mean that your site won't be accessible to people who are still on IPv4-only connections).
• It might be limited by your ISP: some ISPs firewall many or all inbound connection to consumer lines, requiring them to request that this is disabled (or even pay for the privilege) if they want to self-host. Other ISPs limit some ports (especially e.g. SMTP), which might be an issue if you want to e.g. selfhost email servers as well as web servers.
• Many broadband Internet connections are asymmetric: this means that in order to give you the fastest downloads possible, your upload speed is limited. This can make selfhosted websites slow.

Ugh! That's an annoying list, isn't it?

But I'd 100% recommend this approach if it interests you. An older computer or a cheap Raspberry Pi or similar can make a great basic selfhosting box: just install a webserver of your choice (I like Caddy!), instruct your router to do "port forwarding" of ports 80 (HTTP) and/or 443 (HTTPS) to your computer (or put it in your "DMZ" if that's your router's preference, though this introduces different risks), and start hosting! Then, just point a domain name's A-record at your public-facing IP address and you're golden!

[lakes]

Since someone brought up Github Pages, I feel like it's necessary to bring up Codeberg Pages. Since Codeberg is a Github alternative and Github does shady stuff like scan code uploaded to it to train Copilot.
That said, I'm currently using a friend's VPS for hosting my website. Even if you don't have the means to self host yourself, sometimes you meet someone online who is big on self-hosting and just hit it off.
Edit: Nevermind someone already brought codeberg. 

[candycanearter07]

I believe https://sr.ht Sourcehut has a page builder too. Keep in mind though that once it's out of beta you have to pay $4/mo for it...

[Adam]

A great tip (and something I routinely do, too!), with a few caveats:

• You either need a static IP address (which don't come as standard from most ISPs) that you can point your domain name(s) at, or to use a dynamic DNS service (which might lock you in to "awkward" domain names or else paying for a premium feature) or else implement your own tool to do this using your domain registrar/DNS provider's API.
• It doesn't work if you've unlucky enough to have an ISP that implements Carrier-Grade NAT (where several customers "share" a public-facing IP address: connections like these are more-common in some parts of the world than others)
• Similarly, it doesn't work as well if your ISP only offers you a public IPv6 address (this'll mean that your site won't be accessible to people who are still on IPv4-only connections).
• It might be limited by your ISP: some ISPs firewall many or all inbound connection to consumer lines, requiring them to request that this is disabled (or even pay for the privilege) if they want to self-host. Other ISPs limit some ports (especially e.g. SMTP), which might be an issue if you want to e.g. selfhost email servers as well as web servers.
• Many broadband Internet connections are asymmetric: this means that in order to give you the fastest downloads possible, your upload speed is limited. This can make selfhosted websites slow.

Good points from Dan as usual!

I'd like to offer some counter-points, though!

• Dynamic DNS is, for most self-hosted websites, a perfectly acceptable alternative to a static IP. Yes, it requires either a custom domain or a subdomain from a DDNS provider, but that same is true with hosted services as well; either you're stuck with a subdomain, like xxxx.github.io, xxxx.nekoweb.org, or so on, or you buy a custom domain and become CoolSite.org or whatever. In that sense, it's really not much different. 
  My personal domain, by the way, costs $6.50 per year. That's not free, but it's not crazy expensive either.
• CG-NAT can definitely put a hamper on the fun, but it doesn't make self-hosting impossible. There are some free services, like Cloudflare,* which can let folks connect to you even behind CG-NAT. If you want to feel really special, you can even make your website accessible over the darkweb (tor, i2p), which generally will work regardless of NAT issues.
• IPv6 is the future, right?       In all honestly, though, a lot of areas do provide IPv6 connectivity, with 60% of the US, and many European countries providing at least 50% IPv6 access. Yes, it's not as universal as IPv4, but it is growing every day.
• ISP firewalls do exist, although I haven't encountered one personally. The tools to overcome this restriction should be the same as the CG-NAT issue.
• Lastly, cable internet service is almost always asymmetrical, but if you happen to be lucky enough to have fiber internet, most of those, at least where I live, all offer symmetrical bandwidth.
  I have asymmetrical myself. Last year I had 300/7 service, but was recently able to upgrade to 300/80. Big difference for streaming video from my media server, but really no noticeable difference in how my websites performed; even music streaming worked fine on the old plan. 
  For serving text, photos, and other typical homepage type sites, the asymmetry is likely unnoticeable. For what it's worth, hosting provides may impose bandwidth limitations, too, so you're not necessarily avoiding the problem by having someone else host your site.

   

Again, it's definitely not the right choice for everyone, but none of the potential challenges are unsurmountable.
...And you might find that none of the above challenges apply to you at all!
 

_{*Cloudflare absolutely has their own potential issues, but it's just an example.} 

[Rubbereon]

Also, I don't know if social features should necessarily be a selling point for a webhost. I have my own qualms with the fact Neocities has the status updates, but that's a topic for a thread on it's own lol (or maybe even a blog post).

I added this rule to make sure the suggestions are at the very least kind of relevant to the experience you'd get from using neocities. Yes there is a bajillion hosts out there, but nobody's gonna tell you that digitalocean, dreamhost, hostinger and godaddy have the same vibe as neocities.

Meanwhile, the first suggestion which was Github pages is valid because Github is a social platform that is (for the most part) free, so you get a similar experience on it as you would on neocities.

[w8n8]

Hosts I've recommended before:


Recommending against this. Github is owned by Microsoft and uses code uploaded to their servers for AI training. Codeberg Pages and Sourcehut are similar and don't have those issues.

It looks like Marigold Town has transitioned to be read-only according to the headline on the website and registration has closed! Sad, but it looks like it's still up to look at the websites.