I made a selfhosted 'Nekoweb-like' site editor for my kid!

[Dan Q]

Imagine my pride when my 12-year-old told me that she wanted to start learning HTML and CSS and begin making a website of her own. But where would I recommend that she host it?

My first thought was Nekoweb, because its "Nekode" text editor is amazingly easy-to-use and a great way to start making sites without having to think about the "hard stuff" until she's ready to. But it seemed silly to recommend that she host a static site elsewhere when I've got a fibre connection right to the NAS in my own home.

So I basically copied (some of) what Nekoweb do: I pointed a domain and a subdomain at our house, told Caddy to serve a static site directory for the former, and told it to proxy OpenVSCode Server from the latter. And it all... just worked. Now she's got a web address she can go to and edit/upload files and it instantly publishes to her site.

It took just 17 lines of Caddy configuration, one Docker command, and a tiny bit of DNS configuration and this just... worked. I'm so pleased, my kiddo is happy that she can publish quickly and easily, and because it's on infrastructure I control it'd be trivially easy to extend it if she later wanted to do PHP, or use the shell to run a static site generator, or integrate some kind of source control with a continuous deployment pipeline, or anything else. Win, win, win.

Anyway: I wrote a short blog post explaining exactly how I did it, if anybody's interested.

[rnottelovesowls]

that's so sweet, dan! well done!

shout-out to all parents who support their kids in their personal projects 

[Cabbage]

So cool! It's great seeing stuff like that, bookmarking the blog post in case I ever wanna tinker with something like that down the road. Appreciate the point towards Nekoweb, too, haven't heard of it before this thread.

[lakes]

that's so sweet :0

[dogbrain]

this is so sweet and cute if i was your kid i would feel so loved and encouraged, great job on this!

[Loebas]

This is so sweet to read. And also awesome to hear your kid wants to make his own website.

[w8n8]

   How cool! I'm admittedly not very knowing on self-hosting, but I'll reference your blog post for future reference! 

[raven]

Imagine my pride when my 12-year-old told me that she wanted to start learning HTML and CSS and begin making a website of her own. But where would I recommend that she host it?

My first thought was Nekoweb, because its "Nekode" text editor is amazingly easy-to-use and a great way to start making sites without having to think about the "hard stuff" until she's ready to. But it seemed silly to recommend that she host a static site elsewhere when I've got a fibre connection right to the NAS in my own home.

So I basically copied (some of) what Nekoweb do: I pointed a domain and a subdomain at our house, told Caddy to serve a static site directory for the former, and told it to proxy OpenVSCode Server from the latter. And it all... just worked. Now she's got a web address she can go to and edit/upload files and it instantly publishes to her site.

It took just 17 lines of Caddy configuration, one Docker command, and a tiny bit of DNS configuration and this just... worked. I'm so pleased, my kiddo is happy that she can publish quickly and easily, and because it's on infrastructure I control it'd be trivially easy to extend it if she later wanted to do PHP, or use the shell to run a static site generator, or integrate some kind of source control with a continuous deployment pipeline, or anything else. Win, win, win.

Anyway: I wrote a short blog post explaining exactly how I did it, if anybody's interested.

literally trying not to cry you are the best parent ever, are y'all adopting any more? I'm available

[Dan Q]

literally trying not to cry you are the best parent ever, are y'all adopting any more? I'm available

This might be the best thing anybody has ever said to me on the Internet.

[raven]

This might be the best thing anybody has ever said to me on the Internet.

I wish I could like your response a million times 

[clownvomitz]

this is the coolest and sweetest thing ever! i'm sure your kid will remember this for many years to come. 

[Corgithellama]

I would have loved something like this as a kid! props to you for being a wonderful parent! she'll remember this forever

[CrabbyJade]

awwww!!! i remember getting a "how to code a website" book when i was in like 4th or 5th grade, but i didn't have a good computer back then so i just postponed my fantasies until i became an adult with a fancy adult computer. all i can say is that you are doing very good job raising your child.