Basically, just put a bunch of html/css files in a GitHub repo, then use the above page to let Netlify publish that on the net... it can even set up DNS for you so you can your own domain.
That seems appropriate for people who understand terms like “continuous deployment” and “serverless functions”, but I thought we were discussing a far, far more widespread audience. Nerds can set up websites with just an ssh password - we need something for the remaining 99.9%
You don't even need Netlify. You can host basically any static sites directly on GitHub. I've got one pure HTML/CSS site, six React apps, and two Jekyll sites running on GitHub Pages.
What are the best current options for 'creating your own website'? Are we talking primarily blogging, or are we seeking a more general solution? As a geek, my first instinct is github pages, but that’s far from user-friendly, as-is.
I guess, if we’re talking about 'creating your own website', we do literally mean any site, not just a limited subset. Clearly, server-side scripting is out of scope, so we're talking content rather than apps - so any form of HTML+Js+css, with a very accessible UI, and lots of 'templates' available for each of the three technologies.
See https://www.netlify.com/
Basically, just put a bunch of html/css files in a GitHub repo, then use the above page to let Netlify publish that on the net... it can even set up DNS for you so you can your own domain.
If that's still too hard, you can use a drag-and-drop option: https://app.netlify.com/drop
Just drop a folder with your website and you're done.