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[PompiPompi]

I thought to put it in techincal, but this one also borders as "creative".
I want to create a new website for my new game "Wonder: The Evil".
I have two websites currently.
http://www.pompipompi.net/
http://www.pompidev.net/

In the new website I want a blog and a few more pages I guess. I like how the wolfire website looks, for example.
What would you put in a new game website? what are the considerations?
More importantly, which tool should I use to create the website? There is this google engine that wolfire use and it's very scalable. But does it require coding? I am a programmer, but coding in php or whatever to create a website sounds eww. Especielly when there are things like wordpress?
So what should I use? I really want the scalability of the cloud, but I want it also to not waste too much of my time.

[Cidolfas]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

Ask yourself what features you want out of your website. You say you want a blog and a few more features, and mention wordpress. Wordpress is a great platform (for blogs or to expand as a platform for articles), and is written entirely in PHP. It's pretty user-friendly though, and I think Wordpress 3 lets you create non-blog pages with static content from within the control panel, so you don't have to much with PHP.

The downside is that you will have to learn the templating language it uses to customize it. It's not hard for somebody with HTML/CSS experience, but you do need to read up on how it works. There's no way around opening up Eclipse/VIM/TextMate/Notepad++ and hashing a site out yourself if you want it to be good.

For what to put in it? Hmmm, others will have a better idea about it, but game information, screenshots, developer process stuff, and a devblog are what I usually go to indie developer websites to look at.

As for google's App Engine, that's based on Java and I haven't touched it.

Also, do you really need the cloud? It's scalable, yes, but unless you're pushing a ton of bandwidth most shared hosting/virtual hosting providers won't cost as much and will work just fine.

Finally, while it looks like you've got this covered, other people reading might find it useful to invest time into web design. Two of my favorite resources have been Designing for the Web (http://designingfortheweb.co.uk/ - free!) and Web Design for Developers (http://www.pragprog.com/titles/bhgwad/web-design-for-developers - kinda pricey)

[PompiPompi]

Thanks for the tips.
Well, "traditional" web hosting tend to have their cavets. The file download is slow, this is slow, that is slow. It doesn't really work well. With the cloud I was hoping not to need to worry about a slow server, which is a very common scenario for traditional servers.

[jotapeh]

First and foremost, do not worry about scalability right now. It is a common mistake to prepare for the hordes of people knocking at your door, when in reality they never show up to 99.9% of websites.

Secondly, as Cidolfas said, Wordpress is pure PHP. PHP is fine, though easily abused. You will find a lot of professional websites are built entirely in PHP, including Facebook (or at least, for now it is.)

You're going to need to create demand, and for that you're going to need to design a good site before you ever have to worry about traffic and scalability. As someone who has spent a few years in the professional website business, allow me to give you two pointers:

1) Try to make it simple, not clever.

2) It can be clever, if it is simple.

[PompiPompi]

Thanks,
Though I should note that on my current web host, I have a file I need to share with people, and the download is like 50Kb/sec. Maybe I need mirrors for that and it's unrelated to the website. But maybe the website is also kind of slow similar to the download?

[bateleur]

A website is ultimately just a bunch of files (plus maybe an exported DB). Moving web host is the work of a few hours if you later need to.

[jotapeh]

Thanks,
Though I should note that on my current web host, I have a file I need to share with people, and the download is like 50Kb/sec. Maybe I need mirrors for that and it's unrelated to the website. But maybe the website is also kind of slow similar to the download?

This is an issue of throughput, either other peoples' or the hosts. Not how your site is coded.

Quality hosts will have better throughput, discount cheapie site hosts will not. Alas thems the way the cookie crumbles, only way around it is more $$$ on a better host