How should I host and build my wife's web site?

[jercra]

My wife would like a web site for her business and bought the domain last night.  She doesn't really know what she wants to do with it but a basic site with info, pictures and blog posts will suffice at least for now.  I've built lots of sites in my life but much more on the backoffice CRUD/WebService front than pretty front end UI types.  So my questions are:
 
1) Where should I host the site?  My options include on GoDaddy/Something similar, on AWS free tier, on my own server (Windows Server 2012), on VMs hosted on my own server.  I'd prefer not to pay since this web site will be purely informational and not generate a single dollar.  My concerns with hosting from home are security, uptime, my wife bitching about the quality of my support, the quality of my support.  Concerns with AWS is the 1 GB of RAM and 1 CPU on the free tier.  Concerns with other hosting sites is $6/month cost for $0 return.  Am I being cheap with my wife's business account at my own expense?
 
2) If I do host on my own or AWS, what design tools exist that I could hand to my decidedly non-technical wife so that I'm not left designing. building and updating here website for the rest of my life?  I was thinking I'd just install Wordpress and let her go from there, but that's mostly because I already wrote the Puppet code for something else and it will take me 30 minutes to get going on a couple of Centos VMs.

 

[Monbo Jumbo]

Do not host on godaddy.

I'd recommend WordPress for design. Simple.

 

[rembrat]

If you go with Wordpress purchase a theme that comes with some sort of Drag and Drop functionality. 
 
GoDaddy is fine.

 

[Monbo Jumbo]

Go Daddy security is crap. There was a major hack a few years ago where lots of godaddy sites were hit, mine included. It was a security flaw on their end. They wouldn't admit to it, nor fix it properly.

 

[nvalvo]

If you don't already have hosting set up, I see no reason not to start with Squarespace or something similar. 
 
The difference between their $8-24/month (depending on features) cost and the cost of basic hosting/domain name registration is pretty minimal. If it's worth the time to do, I can't see why it wouldn't be worth the money to do well, especially since you don't want this to turn into a major headache for you. 
 
Plus, the design templates are good, work on mobile, they have an approachable drag and drop editing tool and tech support with a good reputation. 

 

[jercra]

I'm not convinced it's worth the time to do, hence why I'm not sure it's worth the money.  She doesn't really have a definitive plan beyond "I need a web page".

 

[Blacken]

If you don't already have hosting set up, I see no reason not to start with Squarespace or something similar.

This is the right answer in almost all non-technical cases.

If you can't elucidate why you need more than Squarespace, you want Squarespace.

 

[Kenny F'ing Powers]

Go Daddy security is crap. There was a major hack a few years ago where lots of godaddy sites were hit, mine included. It was a security flaw on their end. They wouldn't admit to it, nor fix it properly.

Meh. Lost access for a few hours, if I recall correctly. Doesn't sound like her business is high traffic enough to worry about it.

 

[zenter]

elucidate

Nerd

 

[jercra]

Ok, thanks all.  Sounds like I have my answer.  I'll check out both Go Daddy (who have both her accounting and domain name registration) and Squarespace and go with whichever one will give me the highest wife acceptance factor.

 

[AlNipper49]

This is the right answer in almost all non-technical cases.

If you can't elucidate why you need more than Squarespace, you want Squarespace.

One day someone will take our Squarespace recommendation huh?

 

[dirtynine]

Squarespace is by far the best answer for this kind of thing. 

 

[Blacken]

Nerd

:smith:

 

[Blacken]

One day someone will take our Squarespace recommendation huh?

:nsmith:

 

[jercra]

Squarespace account opened.  We'll see how it goes.