There are problems with running your own web server:
* Most service carriers allocate subscribers relatively small outgoing bandwidth. So your site may seem slow to readers.
* If your site is under load, your own internet connection will get strangled.
* Keeping your server up, and secure, requires considerable skill.
* Typical net access accounts provide dynamic IP addresses to subscribers. Which change quite often. So you have a problem with how to provide DNS lookup to your web server. Also the DNS system takes a while for updates to spread around the world, so every time your IP address changes, your site will become inaccessible to many people for a while.
Alternatively, you can buy hosting and DNS registration quite cheaply. It does not have to be in your country, and the domain registration and hosting don't have to be in the same country either. Search around for the cheapest deal.
One tip: Do not use Network Solutions. They are bastards (long personal story there.)
As for how you generate and maintain the content, you have options:
* Use a wrapper service like wordpress. Where you get lots of bells and whistles, but the method of creating content is abstracted from the underlying html. There's still a learning curve, but you end up stuck with that provider, and don't acquire any more general net/html skills. Also if the service doesn't let you do what you want, there's nothing you can do about it. Also censorship, and typically their terms of service state they own your content.
* Get a bare server, with a file system, direct access via FTP to upload your content, and ideally a server management console like Cpanel. Nice if you have a unix console login too, but not essential.
For uploading and maintaining files on the server you can use a plain FTP utility like WinSCP, or a more complex utility that does mass file comparisons and syncs the online files with your local ones. These tools are very useful, and I used to use one but it died. Now I just use WinSCP.
* Cloud-based stuff. I have no advice, as I'm cynical about the whole concept and avoid it.
I do it the bare server way. Write your content in html and css. Add javascript if you want. Then your learning curve has widely useful results; skills you can use for anything network or html related.
My 'not a blog' ramblings are here:
http://everist.org/NobLog/index.htm (Ha ha, the front page is very plain, because I have something planned for it in future, that depends on *another* software development project. Which like so many projects, is unfinished.)
You can use the 'view source' feature in any browser to take a look at existing websites (including mine) to see how stuff was done. Mine is very simple - one small css file, plus the htm and image files. A bit of folder structure to keep images separate per posting. No active content or database. A very simple SED script locally, to do some repetitive html code generation for thumbnail images. If you want to keep it even simpler with no interdependencies, you can embed the css within the header of each page's html file. That way when you try new style stuff on new pages, you don't risk breaking existing pages.
Large commercial sites are typically VERY complicated. But there's no reason you have to get bogged down in that kind of drama. You can do a lot with just a few style templates.
There are any number of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) html editors, but you can also use a plain text editor and a standard browser. Open the same .htm file with both. Edit as plain text, save file, refresh browser to see the result. That's how I do it. Nice and simple. Minimalist tools, and all free.
Another advantage of this stand alone method, is you can keep a local 'in development' tree on your PC, where you write and polish articles before uploading. Also keep a 'posted' tree, as a backup of your online content.
Also you can try writing some articles and get them to a finished state, exactly as other people would see them, before even deciding to go ahead and hire a web server, etc. I'd advise doing this. Verify you can actually write content, and have some friends give feedback, before committing any money.
Another choice to make, is whether you want reader comments. Adding that means some active scripting, and running a database process on your server. More learning curve, but more significantly it's a can of worms because then you have to moderate the results. Unless you are very thick skinned and prepared to take any official heat for whatever idiots might put in the comments. I just don't.
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