I've never really had a proper website for myself, although I have tinkered with web dev before (I made a 'site' for myself on a spare box with lighttpd+Django, and, before that, Apache+PHP)
More recently, I've played around with Blogger a little bit, but the limitations are unacceptable.
I kind of want a site for myself to show off my projects, post whatever crazy ideas I've got, and do little demos/tutorials. I'd like something straightfoward and manageable, but there are a few odd conditions. First, I do a lot of math-y stuff and I'd like to be able to enter TeX code straight into the site (like $$e^j\theta = \cos{\theta} + j\sin{\theta}$$) and have it automatically typeset the equation and insert a png image. The implication of this is that the [i]server probably has to have LaTeX and supporting software installed[/i] or allow such software to be installed. I'd also like to be able to post little Javascript+Canvas demos to demonstrate algorithms and such, which means that I should be able to upload and include separate ".js" files.
I'm a pretty good programmer, handy with a Unix shell or SSH session, and decent at the design end of things (although all of the standards have changed since I last did anything like this), but I still need general information about the entire process. From hosting to design.
I'm not sure where to host. I'd like something reputable, but I'd also like to keep costs as low as possible. Free would be ideal (it would probably be a [i]very[/i] low-traffic site), but I'd probably pay up to like $10/month if I have to. Wordpress looks like the de-facto standard for web blog software currently, is this good, or does anyone else have recommendations.
As for the design end, I think my biggest concern is finding resources that don't come with copyright issues. I'm considering doing a design not too dissimilar to [url=day9.tv]day[9]'s site[/url] where it has [i]some texture[/i] (without being gaudy), some bright accent colors, and clean lines. So what I need is a resource for stock art to work from and some web fonts that can be freely embedded. I'm partial to the geometric sans-serif fonts, like Futura, and I think something Futura-like would be great for headings, but I can't find any good clones (it was made in the 1920s, surely it's copyright would have expired by now??). Recommendations for a nice clean sans-serif reading font would also be appreciated.
I'm not sure about domains. I'm not sure who the reputable domain name registrars are these days. I actually can't even think of what I'd call the site, so registering a domain might be getting ahead of myself. I might be OK with a temporary sub-domain for the time being.
Hosting wise, I can only suggest that you use a VPS; but that might not be the most ideal solution for you but it provides you with the best flexibility:cost ratio by far, they are even quite cheap if you go for the right host. [url=http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_vserver/vq7]Hetzner[/url] have some crazy bandwith caps with good prices.
As far as software goes, I'd like to recommend [url=http://habariproject.org/en/]Habari[/url], I find it rather simple to work with (since it lets you just HTML in your posts) and has a fair few plug ins last time I checked.
On the fonts side, you could try looking through [url=http://www.google.com/webfonts]google's web fonts[/url] as there are plenty to choose from and fairly simple to use. I'm not so good with design myself but if you do create the theme from scratch I'd suggest you use the [url]http://html5boilerplate.com/[/url] since it's flashy, web 3.0 and all that.
as for domains, my friends have had little trouble with [url=http://en.gandi.net/]gandi[/url] as a registrar.
Thanks for the input.
I think I'm probably going to wait until the end of the semester to start this. (I don't have the time just yet :( )
I'll rez the thread when I actually get started.
A warning with using google's fonts, they're good an d all but if too many people are using that font at once then the site might load slower.
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