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Ask HN: Best way to create a landing page?

by erkken on 12/4/19, 10:35 AM with 62 comments

• by tkainrad on 12/5/19, 10:35 AM

  I recommend using a static site generator. It brings precisely the features you ask for:

    - easy SEO optimization, especially compared to SPA  
    - easy content management, GitOps  
    - fast, scales well  
    - free to host via various services (e.g. GitLab and GitHub)
  

  Personally, I like Hugo. They have an amazing gallery of free templates: https://themes.gohugo.io/

  You might enjoy my blog post on how I host my personal website for free with Hugo and GitLab Pages: https://tkainrad.dev/posts/using-hugo-gitlab-pages-and-cloud...

• by r_singh on 12/5/19, 10:38 AM

  Wordpress is a great option, many large companies use Wordpress for landing pages (also the most popular on Builtwith). Its CMS also makes it easy to set up a blog, update pages, etc.

  If you're not well versed with using Wordpress (like me) than there's 2 routes you can take:

  Developer route: Use a static site generator. (not meant to be exhaustive)

  - Gatsby: if you know React

  - Hugo

  - Jekyll: ruby

  - simple HTML + CSS static website

  Non Dev route: If you're not a developer, you could use one of the following paid tools:

  - clickfunnels

  - hubspot

  - mailchimp

  - leadpages

  - unbounce

  - and many more

  If you're using a static site generator, it's really easy to host it on AWS Amplify Console for free.

  Disclaimer: not associated with any of the above listing products

• by ademcan on 12/5/19, 8:10 AM

  I always start with https://html5up.net/ where you have a nice selection of free HTML5+CSS templates! I hope it helps.

• by TKAB on 12/5/19, 10:17 AM

  An option that I like to use is Middleman (or any other static site generator) for creating the pages and Netlify for hosting, all for free even with your own domain and HTTPS.

  You have nice static HTML pages with a CDN, super fast, and there's even a CMS option with NetlifyCMS, which works by creating git commits for you and then automatically pushes the new static version on Netlify. The basics in Netlify are free and there are nice add-ons where some are also free (e.g. forms).

  Check out the template list here: https://templates.netlify.com

• by roosgit on 12/4/19, 12:12 PM

  In a somewhat similar situation I used PHP with `include`.

  The structure was something like this:

    - index.php
    - header.php
    - sidebar.php
    - footer.php
    - page-1.php
    - page-2.php
    ...
  

  In `header.php` I used variables for the title, description, etc. and then in each page I specified the values for those variables. This way each page had the same header HTML code, but with a different title, description and so on.

• by fastbeef on 12/4/19, 11:33 AM

  https://carrd.co/ is your friend here

• by tiborsaas on 12/5/19, 10:23 AM

  > Is wordpress still a good alternative?

  No, you just said you don't need a CMS.

  I would hand edit the HTML and deploy it on Netlify with a Parcel build step, at least that's what I've done.

  https://parceljs.org/

      parcel build *.html --public-url https://your.page
  

  > I want it to be SEO optimized.

  It's a complex problem, it all boils down the template you use. I usually hunt hours for free HTML/CSS templates then get mad about them and create one from scratch using some CSS framework :)

• by martin_a on 12/5/19, 10:25 AM

  Take some Bootstrap 4 Template and just stick to HTML + CSS. It's enough for a first impression, don't go for the tech stack overkill.

• by cdolan on 12/5/19, 10:02 PM

  Surprised webflow.com has not been mentioned yet. Been using it for years and its an absolute Wordpress killer.

  You can make simple landing pages, full sites, etc. All with as much or as little custom coding as you want.

  It feels like what Squarespace sold me on back in 2011 for my first site... but it actually works, you can export the HTML if you want to self host, or use their backend. Great stuff

• by leerob on 12/5/19, 4:15 AM

  Personally, I would use Next.js. It allows you have dynamic pages (e.g. your app) alongside static pages (e.g. landing page). Since it's server-side rendered, it's great for SEO.

  You mentioned you don't want to do SPA+SSR. With static pre-rendering from Next.js, there isn't a SPA. It's a fully static site.

  You also mentioned having multiple pages. Rather than dealing with React Router or other SPA approaches, Next has a `/pages` directory where each file nested inside maps to a route. So `pages/about.js` is /about. It's similar to PHP in that regard.

  If you don't need CMS, then you don't need Wordpress. For hosting, I would recommend Zeit's Now. They're also the creators of Next.js, so the tech pairs well together.

  It's as simple as `npx create-next-app` to make the app and then `now` to deploy.

  https://nextjs.org/ https://zeit.co/home

• by woutr_be on 12/5/19, 10:40 AM

  I would personally use Jekyll, it's pretty easy to build, free to host (thanks to Netlify or Github pages), perfect for SEO since it's all static content.

  There's tons of themes available: https://www.jekyll-resources.com/

• by zelly on 12/6/19, 7:11 AM

  - Static HTML5 on a CDN (speed)

  - Responsive design (important; you will get penalized otherwise)

  - Minimal JavaScript (React still gets penalized)

  - Metadata like image alt text, JSON-LD structured data, <meta>, and so on

  This is the best you can do for SEO without external resources.

• by otherlandlabs on 12/4/19, 11:34 AM

  Personally I would go either with pure HTML/CSS/JS, or if you wanna get fancy with Gatsby + Contentful.

• by saviorand on 12/5/19, 3:15 PM

  Hugo can also serve as a no-code/low-code solution:

  1) you install Hugo following the guide from gohugo.io/getting-started/quick-start .

  2) You download any theme from themes.gohugo.io and set them up with instructions on theme's page. For example, the theme I used is for wrenches.io is hyde-hyde .

  3) You change general settings for the site and add content by adding and editing files in your website's folder.

  That's it! I usually host on netlify and deploy from GitHub, so it also doesn't cost me anything except for domain.

  Hugo themes also allow to make many different kinds of websites, and they are fairly easy to use. Another example of a website made the same way is justfindthis.com ; the theme for it is Highlights

• by ciocarlia on 12/5/19, 12:15 PM

  I recently dealt with the same issue and was satisfied with prerender spa plugin (https://github.com/chrisvfritz/prerender-spa-plugin).

  It enabled me to quickly implement the landing page with Vue and then build it as a static page that I deployed on Netlify. I found it easier and faster to set up than an SSR solution.

  There's also a Vue-CLI version of the prerender plugin (https://www.npmjs.com/package/vue-cli-plugin-prerender-spa)

• by laurentdc on 12/5/19, 11:44 AM

  I just use Wordpress with a plain theme and some builder, e.g. OceanWP + Elementor. Little code needed, decent plugin ecosystem (contact forms, cookie warning, seo stuff), one-click deploy on DigitalOcean, Linode...

• by codegeek on 12/5/19, 5:17 PM

  "should be easily managed for updating content "

  This is the key point for me. Who will be managing/updating the content ? If it is users who are non technical, then you have limited options and you can go with something like WordPress. The reason is that if you use those static site generators which are awesome btw, the non tech. users will be limited. Not to mention they will have no WYSIWYG builders to work with.

  So the answer is it depends. If the people making changes/updates are technical enough, static site builders are great. If not, then go with something like WordPress.

• by afloatboat on 12/5/19, 11:38 AM

  Since you're already experienced in Vue I would have a look at https://vuepress.vuejs.org/. I don't have any hands-on experience, but I've only heard positive things about it.

  I'm currently converting a site from static HTML to Gatsby because I got tired of having to copy-paste changes to repeating elements between the different pages. The Vue/React component approach works really well in that regard. And you don't lose out on the static element, nor the SEO.

• by ashpreetbedi on 12/5/19, 9:39 PM

  Could someone explain to me why using a react app built using CRA is bad in this case? I have a similar use case where the app is on app.example.com (built using CRA) and I have a landing page (also built using CRA) on example.com

  The landing page links to: - The App at app.example.com - Docs at docs.example.com - Blog at blog.example.com

  I have 0 front-end experience so this is an honest attempt at understanding why I should NOT be using the CRA for a landing page.

  The landing page isn't doing much so its a very simple react app. But don't understand the implications on SEO

• by thojest on 12/5/19, 11:42 AM

  I think the hardest part is the design of nice images and graphics, if you are not a designer. You can for example use this open-source collection of awesome svg illustrations. They are free of attribution and really good looking. https://turtle.community/discovery/285

• by lbrito on 12/5/19, 11:37 AM

  I've done a few static sites with Nanoc (https://nanoc.ws/), a Ruby gem, and I really enjoy the results. It has quite a few useful helpers for stuff like XMLSitemap, which might be useful for you, and has filters that compile several formats (markdown, erb etc) into HTML.

• by jacob_rezi on 12/5/19, 11:16 AM

  DesignModo's Startup Framework should be at least considered - https://designmodo.com/startup/app/

  We've used it to build Rezi - https://rezi.io

• by stadeschuldt on 12/6/19, 9:20 AM

  To all the people using a static site generator. How do collect emails from interested people? Is there a way to easily integrate this into the static site? Ideally it would be a simple form, that collects the data and stores it somewhere? Google Forms comes to mind but it would integrate that nicely into the UI.

• by nkristoffersen on 12/5/19, 10:13 AM

  I do a lot of GatsbyJS. Now adding Contentful for all landing pages so marketing folk can edit content.

• by Geee on 12/5/19, 11:13 AM

  I'd use Gatsby with TinaCMS. Although TinaCMS isn't quite ready for primetime yet. https://tinacms.org

  And hosting with Netlify maybe.

• by raulgracia on 12/4/19, 2:13 PM

  If you already know and you're familiar with Vue, why don't you use Nuxt.js? You can generate a SPA or a PWA if you don't want to have the SSR version.

• by jcoffland on 12/5/19, 10:21 AM

  How about pug.js for HTML templating and Stylus or Less for the CSS. Then just generate a static site. Static sites are fast and fast is always good SEO.

• by amirathi on 12/5/19, 12:40 PM

  I am using Webflow and highly recommend it.

• by rorykoehler on 12/5/19, 11:12 AM

  HTML and js is the way to go if you are a dev. All the other tools are better suited for non-technical people.

• by pryelluw on 12/6/19, 5:37 AM

  Wordpress with a site builder plugin, a/b testing pligin, and seo plugin is what Id go with.

• by Lucasoato on 12/5/19, 11:39 AM

  Does anyone know if using Angular with Server-Side-Rendering is a good idea? Angular dev here

• by ufarooqi on 12/6/19, 1:02 AM

  You can use Webflow or if you want something quickly then try Product Hunt’s Ship.

• by kaushalk on 12/5/19, 12:20 PM

  https://www.stormviews.net

• by te_chris on 12/5/19, 11:04 AM

  Instapage. We use it for all our PPC landing pages and it's a great, 0 code option.

• by nadavram on 12/6/19, 9:55 AM

  Ask Booligoosh

• by elkynator on 12/5/19, 10:33 AM

  just use www.carrd.co You will get your lander up within half day with all content. Easy to update, easy to learn. Saved a lot of hours and days for me so far. Nothing comes close for me.

• by kaushalk on 12/5/19, 12:16 PM

  Can Anyody tell which one is best for my youtube views https://www.stormviews.net or https://www.follower18.com