2y ago

An alternative to Google Sites

Is there a free alternative to Google Sites that's open source? I want one with free custom domains, not subdomains.

16 comments

Forget about free domains if you want to do something remotely serious with them. A real domain is few dollars/year and AFAIK you could use it coupled with GitHub Pages for simple, static websites or with altervista.org if you need WordPress.
- I second GitHub Pages! I host a professional website/online CV there with a dot com domain for less than 10€/year. There are Jekyll templates to do that or pay someone to make you some custom CSS and Html that's easy to maintain.
- https://www.infinityfree.com
https://neocities.org/ might work for you.
I feel like there's an inherent misunderstanding in your query. If you want to run on your own domain - you run your own stuff (for the most part). You need a webserver, that's about it.
I dat to check google sites first since I never used it before.
From the quick glance I gathered, I‘d say there is no open source equivalent with free custom domains.
Registering top level domains is not available for free I think. The closest I know is duckdns.
If google is giving out top level domains for free now then it is a market dominance strategy because nobody else can do it I think.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
- If google is giving out top level domains for free now then it is a market dominance strategy because nobody else can do it I think.
  I don't they do, they only give free subdomains
  
  That would make sense. But in that case I don’t understand why op is asking for an open source equivalent with free top level domains.
Hugo, Jekill, Docusaurus, host on github pages, netlify. Buy a domain for 15$ per year.
- Yes, but it's a script you install on a web server. I want a builder that's similar to Google Sites.
  
  Domain registrations are not free. It's an annual fee, I don't think any company will give those out for free. I can recommend using https://www.namecheap.com/ for domain registrations.
  
  what about wordpress.com ? (yeah, it's different but by the same developers)
  
  As a developer: google sites is 100% the exact same as wordpress, just looks better.
  I’m not gonna slander you for not knowing the difference between a host and a content management system.
  The issue seems to be that google offers a pretty foolproof experience for people with limited technical knowledge. That is not the case with the majority of open source systems.
  Additionally: from what I hear, you wont get free top level domains with sites and not with other providers so please accept that you wont get this for free.
  Have a good one.

16 comments