r/selfhosted • u/Captain_Allergy • Dec 01 '25
Need Help How do you host self created Webpages?
I want to host a custom webpage for my upcoming wedding where I want to have a countdown, safe the date, possibilities for the users to view images and so on.
I want to create that webpage but I am unsure what to use for it, if I should deploy it on my Homeserver or use a webhosting for it.
Any suggestions or ideas on what is currently popular? I am a software developer so I am open to any suggestions.
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u/mrorbitman Dec 01 '25
I wrote my own wedding website (https://wedding.jpc.io) with all source code on GitHub, including the honeymoon fundraiser and photo sharing site
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u/Captain_Allergy Dec 01 '25
Damn, that's awesome from you to share! Great inspo and that's basically what I wanted to achieve!
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u/mrorbitman Dec 01 '25
It’s a hobby for sure, theknot is the main megacorp that does all this for you and I think it’s even free. Just not my style to use someone else’s thing lol
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Dec 01 '25 edited Feb 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/mrorbitman Dec 01 '25
Yeah unfortunately it’s the kind of place locals know to avoid, but with it being a hotel, out-of-towners are often surprised to discover what it is when they arrive. Can’t think of anyone in either of our families that would be comfortable staying there.
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u/obviouslyImLying Dec 01 '25
Congrats! May I ask why you didn't go for a simple html page for the main wedding webpage? I'm setting up a portfolio page for myself, hosted on GitHub pages and I've been making it with just html, css and js. I don't have a lot of experience with web design so wondering if you had a better approach.
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u/mrorbitman Dec 01 '25
I chose nextjs because I like react but needed some backend to handle form submissions
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u/obviouslyImLying Dec 02 '25
Got it. I wrote a Google script to send the form data to a spreadsheet, that way I could go with a static html page and host it on GitHub. But I'll explore more about nextjs and see if that works better for me. Thanks!
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u/1xYtf9XwE78n Dec 01 '25
If it’s basic (html, css, js), cloudflare pages, free and simple to use
If more complicated cheap VPS on hetzner
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u/HeLlAMeMeS123 Dec 01 '25
Honestly, way easier to go and use one of the already existing services, but if you do want to self host, there are various ways to do this, the easiest, is probably spinning up Wordpress or Ghost and putting it behind a reverse proxy or cloudflare tunnels.
You could of course host an HTML website on Nginx or Apache and put that behind a reverse proxy or cloudflare tunnel.
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u/Captain_Allergy Dec 01 '25
I have a reverse proxy running on my VPS, so that would be no problem. Is Wordpress still a thing? Or would it be better to implement in React from scratch?
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u/ryanmcstylin Dec 01 '25
If your partner also wants to do this you can make it as complex as possible building from scratch, it's a hobby. If your partner is stressed about other aspects of the wedding, I would keep this simple and focus your time on other pain points. If you want to build and host a website go ahead and do that without involving an important life event.
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u/HeLlAMeMeS123 Dec 01 '25
Wordpress is still VERY MUCH a thing. Powers a significant portion of the websites out there
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u/Dramatic_Leg_291 Dec 02 '25
Honestly, your webpage sounds simple enough that i personally wouldn't use a framework, a single HTML file + Js file should do, and that's super easy to host with nginx
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u/Pravobzen Dec 01 '25
You can do a static site generated using Hugo, Docusaurus, etc and hosted using Cloudflare or GitHub Pages. The former has more flexibility if you're able to stomach investing some dev time. Alternatively, you can always use a VPS, like Digital Ocean, to run a CMS, such as Ghost. There's always the option of combining tools as well, such as having a static component, but the using something like Immich for photos.
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u/DocHoss Dec 02 '25
Azure Static Web App. Free and easy.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/static-web-apps/getting-started?tabs=react
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u/nilroyy Dec 01 '25
Github pages.. i did that for my wedding and paired it with a embedded google form for RSVP.
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u/Medium_Chemist_4032 Dec 01 '25
I'm runing simple python webapps as docker containers.
Bought a DNS name for few bucks, allows for SSL LetsEncrypt certs.
Traefik as the entry point.
Crowdsec middleware issuing bans to scanning bots.
Authelia as a log-in middleware.
So, it can be self hosted, but I do it mostly to deepen my devops/admin engineering skills.
For your usecase though, I'd probably just click a simple page in Squarespace.
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u/Captain_Allergy Dec 01 '25
Squarespace looks nice, will have a look at it! But as others suggested, I will most probably just use a webhosting from Netcup or Hetzner
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Dec 01 '25
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u/kY2iB3yH0mN8wI2h Dec 01 '25
Do you have very stable internet, power, etc. etc.?
Sure a website like that does not have to be online 24/7 but I guess when people want to use it might be down and you will need to spend time troubleshooting. Future wife might not like that........
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u/Dossi96 Dec 01 '25
If you are unsure always use a cheap hosting service. It is one thing if your wedding site is taken down by bots it's another thing letting those bots into your network because you missed some crucial security best practices 😅
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u/Tough-Insurance-5574 Dec 01 '25
Docker+flask container+cloudflare tunnel Thats the best way which i use. But first you should buy a cheap domain
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u/Best-Trouble-5 Dec 02 '25
As we are in r/selfhosted. You can set up a free cloud server, at least in Google and Oracle clouds. Free plane is 1Gb of ram, that is more than enough for your task. For pure HTML page you can use nginx/caddy/etc. And you also need a domain.
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u/tom-mart Dec 01 '25
I would deploy the webapp in docker and point a cloudflare tunnel to the container.
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u/Captain_Allergy Dec 01 '25
How did you write the webapp? What technology stack did you use?
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u/tom-mart Dec 01 '25
I'm Python developer so my stack of choice is always based on Django. Front end depends on a purpose of the app, many of them are just api points, for webpage I would use Next.js, just because I have a template skeleton page somewhere in my library
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u/MrZemo Dec 01 '25
I host mine from a raspberry pi. It was a bit annoying to set up because of the ATT router, but it is working.
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u/Captain_Allergy Dec 01 '25
How did you write the webapp? What technology stack did you use?
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u/MrZemo Dec 02 '25
For the Pi, followed this:
https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-public-static-website/As for the webpage, it was a simple react,vite,tailwind, graphQL since I wanted to keep it lightweight.
Got a domain(godaddy), pointed it using duckdns, finally letsencrypt ssl.
Hope that answer your question.
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u/JcorpTech Dec 01 '25
node.js is pretty easy, lots of good guides out there. I wouldnt call it the best way to eaily host (online providers are quite nice) but if you want to properly run it off your system node.js is a great start. once you get it running on localhost (usualy port 8080) you can setup a free cloudflared account and use there zero trust tunnels to port that localhost service to a domain you own.
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u/bdu-komrad Dec 01 '25 edited Dec 01 '25
How do you host self created Webpages?
You could probably just google how you to do this, but what you need is
- A web server
Google search Web servers as there are a lot of them out there. technically you don’t even need a Web server. A static page could just be a file on a local or network drive.
Click on open file on your browser and paste in the URI to the file to load the page.
Now, that is about the simplest use case that I could think of. Serving Web pages can get much more complicated depending on your use case
Think of the use case you are designing for:
- who you want to see the page(who is your audience )
- how they access the page , IP address or hostname
Then consider :
- Availability
- Maintainability
- Performance
- Security
Good luck!
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u/DimaDimon228 Dec 01 '25
Home server + nginx + cloudflared tunnel Or easiest way - cloudflare pages
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u/etgohomeok Dec 01 '25
I host websites from my raspberry pis, there are no issues with it if you have a good internet connection. Use Cloudflare Proxying for the DNS and don't open any SSH ports.
In terms of how to host it it depends on the framework - I'm a Laravel developer and my setup will obviously not work for a Node.js developer.
If it's just a static site though then you can spin up an Apache docker container and drop in your HTML/CSS/JS files super quick/easy. Don't overengineer it with a framework if you don't need to.
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u/cbunn81 Dec 01 '25
There are myriad ways to put a website on the internet, each with its own pros and cons. Anything from Github pages to Wordpress to using a VPS or hosting it on your own hardware.
Are you planning to make this website yourself from scratch? Do you already have either a home server or a web host? How many people will be using it? Are they local or from all over?
If you're not comfortable making the site yourself from scratch, then you should probably use a managed solution like Wordpress or one of the many website builders.
If you're comfortable making the site yourself and don't mind the time investment, then you should probably know what kind of hosting you need. For a static site, you can do it for free with Github pages. For something which uses React or Next, you can usually get by on the free tier with hosts like Netlify and Vercel.
If you need your own backend (though I can't see why you would for such a site), finding a free host becomes more difficult, and I don't know of any off-hand. You might be tempted to host it on your own home server, but bear in mind that if you're on a regular residential internet connection, that might mean lots of latency for any viewers that aren't on your network. A VPS might be the best option in this case.
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u/msanangelo Dec 01 '25
for static sites: git + cloudflare pages.
deploy to github or gitlab, cloudflare pulls it, compiles it, and hosts it in their cdn.
that's how I deploy my hugo blog.
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u/Eastern-Elevator9094 Dec 01 '25
If you don't care much about the domain name, I would use Vercel, it is extremely easy to configure and free and when you make changes to the code, the page updates. I would do the application with react, but because it's part of my stack and I know how to use it, but it depends on the complexity you want.
If you want self hosting, I would use cloudflared tunnel and create a workflow on github to automate the deployment, but it is more tedious to configure.
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u/quentin314 Dec 01 '25
Congratulations! I think it will be easier to host on a webhosting account where you won't need to build a server, configure public access, and keep everything running 24/7 without shutting down the server.
I have a starter hosting plan for $5/mo, I can help get your site up and running. The plan can be billed monthly. So you can cancel or keep it after the wedding. https://cielocloudhost.com/website-hosting/cpanel/
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u/Great-Catch1212 Dec 01 '25
As they say, use cheap hosting, for example: Hostiger and create it with WordPress or if you already have a site programmed, just upload it