Ask HN: Do you need a web framework for a startup landing page?
Context: idea validation/prototype.
Could I just use htmx to do my prototype?
I want to code as less as possible and avoid no-code. If you just want a simple informational landing page with maybe click through to other static pages to measure seo analytics then simple html/css pages will suffice. If you also want to capture email addresses then you need some sort of back end which you can build with something like rails or Laravel. But in that case I would go with an e-mail marketing platform like convertkit which has built in analytics. However it looks like you want the ability to build quick interactive prototype of your startup idea to validate the idea, in which case I would go with rails or Laravel which allow for quick prototyping and iterating on your idea. You could use htmx with both those frameworks to avoid a full blown JavaScript front end, but rails offers Hotwire and Laravel offers livewire which are packages that are integrated with the respective frameworks You don't need a framework for a single page. That being said, using a framework is probably a good idea if you intend to be on a growth curve. Pyramid is a framework written to scale from a small, single-file site to a site that has grown horizontally scaled across multiple servers. If I understand your needs correctly, Pyramid is probably worth a look, here's a link: https://trypyramid.com/ Pyramid is under active development, and it has a large, helpful, welcoming user community. No you can write it in pure HTML and CSS. It’s really not that hard. Host your static files for free with GitHub pages, or it you want more formal deployments, pay $10/month for DigitalOcean. A custom domain can be had for $20/year. You should not be building out a generic website by hand. No code or outsourcing to a company that does wordpress is the appropriate way to go. Tying someone down, including yourself, to building/maintaining a site is counterproductive. What is the motivation behind avoiding no-code? Are you trying to avoid any cost or is it something else? I want to own my code AND access to all kind of analytics, which are mostly paid walled prototype of what? prototype of a landing page? Just ask ChatGPT to make you a landing page, throw the code in GitHub, and put it up as a cloudflare page. Make changes to the GitHub when you want to change the website. Does it need any interactive features at all? This is what I'm trying to find. The minimal viable startup landing page, but I want to own the code and access to all analytics I want.