So, I've been out of the web development game for awhile now, both professionally and hobby-wise, and am entertaining the idea of jumping back in.  And what better way than building a new site?

Anyone have recommendations for domain registration and hosting services?  I don't really know what my primary needs are (yet), other than probably something cheaper/expecting less traffic.  This is more a labor-of-love kind of thing.  And no shopping, or file transfers, or message boards, or databases, or user accounts or anything.  Just HTML and images for the most part.  At least for now.

I can't speak to the current Domain registration options... but if you're just looking to serve static content, I'd host it out of an S3 bucket to save on costs.

Oh, and development software recommendations? Preferably something free that runs lean. Most familiar with Eclipse, but that seems like overkill for simple HTML.

Cool.  Now if I was to add more dynamic content in the future, would this solution constrain me?

 

I switched from GoDaddy to Namecheap because of GoDaddy's anti net neutrality stance years back. Last year Namecheap totally boned one of my domains somehow, it was down for like 3 days because they screwed something up with their upstream provider related to contact details and got my domain suspended. I'm sure you can find anecdotes about any registrar like that, but there's mine  

I use AWS for everything. As has been said, a static site can be served through S3 no problem. If you want https you can route through cloudfront. Domain can be pointed right at the bucket, I do that regularly for clients on a budget (practically free).

I do all of this VERY regularly, hit me up if you need anything at all.

As for whether S3 would limit you in future, it really depends on the type of dynamic content. You can host html, css, js, and images on S3. Anything static. If your js pulls from, say, the YouTube api, that is fine - the dynamic bit is handled on their server based on your request.

Once you start using PHP, Java, or another backend language, then you'd want to move to an EC2 instance (typically). You COULD use Lambda or another such tool (also on AWS) to do software as a service while keeping the page that serves content on S3, but you're starting to really split up your application at this point. Not a BAD thing per se, but perhaps a tad difficult to manage if you're not used to a component style of work.

If you let me know what you're looking to do I'm sure I could easily let you know specifics on tools and costs.

I pay $5 a month for my hosting and my domain costs $10 a year. PM me if you want some more info  

S3 costs less, jus' sayin'.  
 

I will second S3 if you are simply developing a static website.
 

Sure, but it sounds like he may consider doing things past static HTML, which he'd need to go to EC2. I'm not sure of the costs involved, but for $5 a month, the setup is WAY easier than Amazon's services.

Which service are you using?
 

Hostineer

ETA: Seems they went up to $10 a month for new registration.

Suddenly EC2 ain't so expensive sounding.

Also I lol'd at "Trusted by over 15,000 people". That's tiiiiiiny.

Of course, there's a ton of such services that offer like $5/mth for the first year, and even plenty of absolutely free services. Frankly I see no reason to go outside of AWS personally, if only for that I know that it is 1) incredibly reliable and 2) can be JUST as cheap as the other options. 

Nothing wrong with being a tiny company, Mr. Gatekeeper  

I can see plenty of reasons to not use AWS, but for personal sites and maybe marketplace only sites, it's probably a fine solution.

EC2 is overkill, Lightsail is a much better service for simple sites, you get all the benefits of EC2 without the unnecessary things you won't use. It's $5 per month instead of paying for uptime on the EC2 servers.

Yup. As I say, plenty of accessible options on AWS.

Thanks guys. And yeah, for sure static in the beginning, with whatever possibilities in the future. Gonna use some tax refund money to finally get a new computer here this month and then I'm gonna charge into this.

From what I hear you just go with whatever registrars offer $cheap for new customers and jump around every year.

I've used x10hosting.com, they have a free package.

Absolutely do not do this.
 

Next question...

All my work is just sitting on my local disc. What are good options for online code repositories to "check it into?". Preferably something free... with existing plugins for eclipse. I'm using AWS for hosting... Could I use that somehow?

Gitlab free account? I've been using one for years and I have tons loaded into it. I recall there's an eclipse plugin.

Your EC2 instance will be able to get it to it just fine if it has a NAT gateway configured; otherwise you may need to wrangle a bit to do checkouts locally on the instance. 
 

I would suggest GitHub over GitLab, but it's really a personal preference thing. 

^ yeah I'm the opposite. Personal preference indeed. Admittedly, I've never gone too deep with the extra CI/CD or other functionality.

I was using Subversion for a code repository but this year I switched my whole team to Github and it's way better. It has more options and has more plugins for all other software I use.
I also switched to Visual Studio Code for a development environment, it automatically updates (optional) as you type so I never need to do anything in order to test. I simply stop typing, it saves and uploads on its own.

Funny, I'm used to subversion, but I just spend the last hour figuring out github. Seems like everything is setup and my commits from the workspace are pushing through so I think I'm good to go. Thanks guys.