Question: Good Options For Making A Personal Website?

I'm far from an expert on personal websites, I'm still setting my own up tbh - and by that I mean I have one but don't know how to code it. But it seems like a lot of people are going with neocities for theirs.

The simplest thing if you want an app would be to create a deviantART account, in my opinion. Especially if you plan to primarily publish art. It's not really customizable, but it does the job well and it has a literature section still. The other option is tumblr and then you could use themes from something like Theme Hunter if you wanted it to look more unique on desktop. 

If you'd like something more robust than carrd or milkshake, and personalized, then you're moving away from access to apps. 

Wordpress.com is really good imo, it's free, and it doesn't take too much work to get used to and figure out. There's lots of themes that can handle anything from image galleries to simple blogs and they're easy to install from the admin area (dashboard). About 70% of the internet is running on Wordpress's code, if I remember correctly. 

There's also wix.com and weebly.com. I don't have personal experience with them, but they're free and I've heard they're pretty easy to figure out.

Now, neocities.org is great, if you also have an interest in playing around with coding and find doing so fun (otherwise you'll hate it). So in that case you're getting two things, a play ground and a personal website. 

The difference between Neocities and the other options I mentioned is that the websites are static. Everything you do has to be hand coded. With Wordpress/ Wix/ Weebly, you're not throwing yourself into coding.

Then, there's also the option of just using Neocities and the humble .txt file, which looks like this:


1. the index page .html
2. a .txt article


Here's a really basic, basic run down on how that works in practice (sorry that I'm a bit of a clown in it). With .txt there's no images involved, it's all about writing.

And here's a really basic introduction of CSS and HTML: Lissa Explains It All. I love that site, it's actually where I started learning basic html in the 2000s. I'm not sure if it's updated or super modern, but skimming through it, it looks alright. www.w3schools.com/ is a more thorough resource. 

If there are any sites you like, I could probably tell you what kind of platform they might be running on and how easy it is to replicate. 

edit: Poppy, you beat me! lol. 

[ Dinic ]

I can second Neocities if you're interested in that! That's what we use for our websites and it has a lot of customization, but you do need some knowledge in HTML and CSS. Some people use bases though and that usually works, we've seen a lot of people who use free to use Tumblr themes and modify them so that they can work for a website!

We have some options!
Deviantart: Good for art, the site got super ugly these last few years but its still an ok art host all things considered. Really easy to set up, and unless you work is really 18+, its going to be allowed generally. You can post writing as journals also, but its unlikely to get a ton of traction iirc.
Tumblr: Discourse bin, broken website, we say as we continue to use it. It has really good theme customization but themes sometimes break because tumblr staff is incompetent. Its great for if you want a whole host of posts that are text AND art hosting. It also is good for memes, which Deviantart wont allow. Its good for hosting as there isnt an upper limit anyone has found yet, but sometimes links break. its good for community finding, but the community of tumblr is also kind of terrible at the same time. Its good for tagging, except when you forget to turn off searchability and your post makes it into a keyword search(tag searching is broken unless you manually put in 'tagged/x') and you get exposed to more people than you intended. A mixed bag, really.
Dreamwidth: Delightfully low-discourse. Very quiet, lots of theme customizing. Good journal posts and good tagging. Lots of control over who comments on your stuff and sees your stuff. You can place images there but you cant HOST them there, just some icons. Also its really quiet.
Weebly: Admittedly we dont use weebly, but a lot of people do. Looks like it has decent customizing
Wordpress: Same as weebly. Notably good for long text posts.
Carrd: Good for newbies to code and lets you do a whole lot of stuff but you cant host a lot and long text isnt really easy with it. Everything you said as to why you switched is why its really only good for an externally hosted fancy about/faq page and nothing else.
Google Sites: Its. Not good. But not horrible. The last time we made a google site was ~8?? years ago so maybe its a little better now in terms of customization ability. Good for newbies to code.
Neocities: Fantastic customization, you can host a lot on it with a free account so long as you mind the file sizes of images and such. It allows 18+ stuff but you have to flag your account for it. it IS, however, a steep learning curve for html if you want a site that is super fancy. Googling is your friend for the different codes to change background, margins, and other fancy things. This is what we use for our site.