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General Discussion

Posted by Roger Dailey
Roger Dailey
14,887 Points

Buying a domain and web host service.

Do I need to purchase a domain and web host service right away to continue with my training or can I wait to purchase these? Money is really tight right now.

3 Answers

Matt F.
Matt F.
9,518 Points
Matt F.
Matt F.
9,518 Points

I am not sure what stage of your learning that you are on, but you should be able to build websites without domain/hosting.

All you need for HTML/CSS/JavaScript projects is a computer with a web browser. If you are going to go into PHP, then you would need to configure a local server, using something like MAMP (Mac or Windows). Even if you are not going to use PHP right now, it still may be a good idea to set up such a server. When I was on the PHP track, Treehouse had videos that explained how to set up MAMP/WAMP.

I have used MAMP/WAMP/Vagrant with Laravel Homestead, and now I develop on an Ubuntu virtual machine running LAMP. Out of all of these options, MAMP is what I would consider the easiest to configure.

Hope this helps, Matt

Matt F.
Matt F.
9,518 Points

What Flavio said below is absolutely true. If you are looking to follow along with the lessons on Treehouse, then their Workspaces are great.

Also, the information I offer above will not give you the option to put your site online, but instead would give you an environment to develop projects that you wouldn't necessarily want to develop in Workspaces.

Flavio Carvalho
Flavio Carvalho
26,636 Points

Yes, Matt's answer is good if you plan to code websites from your local computer. There are a few more technicalities to set up a local host. But if it's for the lessons, Workplaces just does the trick!

Roger Dailey
Roger Dailey
14,887 Points

Yes this did help thank you for responding.

Flavio Carvalho
Flavio Carvalho
26,636 Points
Flavio Carvalho
Flavio Carvalho
26,636 Points

Hi Roger,

If you're doing your exercises and coding on Treehouse, no, you don't need to purchase server or domain, all your pages can be coded on Treehouse workspaces and you can preview them from there.

If you're looking to eventually make your pages online "to the world" then yes, you will have to purchase hosting and domain name at some point.

But again, just to do the lessons here you don't have to. Guys here were very nice to think of making workspaces a good environment to code and see your work as you go!

Hope that helps.

Roger Dailey
Roger Dailey
14,887 Points

Thank you for responding, this did help me find out if I needed to purchase those for my training. Thank you again.

Flavio Carvalho
Flavio Carvalho
26,636 Points

Awesome! Good luck.

Ted Sumner
PLUS
Ted Sumner
Courses Plus Student 17,967 Points
Ted Sumner
Ted Sumner
Courses Plus Student 17,967 Points

You can also download Brackets, a free text editor, and it will live preview your code in Chrome. If you run PHP you have to have a local server and it will preview your code on save. You do not need to use Workspaces for that.

As Flavio said, you only need those for publishing sites.