How-to: How to host my static website for free?

How to host my static website for free?

There are many tools to publish your site for free:

Cloudflare Pages
GitHub Pages
Gitlab Pages
Vercel
Netlify
Render

And certainly still others.

In any case, you just have to share the content of the web/prod folder. Here is the way to host your website on GitHub Pages.

Notes:

Free hosting on GitHub Pages is only available with a public repository. Never share or upload sensitives data. Private repository for GitHub Pages is only available with Team plan.
Cloudflare, Vercel, Netlify and Render clone a GitHub or a Gitlab repository, public or private.
I recommend always using a www subdomain
When you add or update files on GitHub, you have to wait a few minutes before publishing

Step 1

Without a personal domain name, the website URL will be: https://username.github.io, where username is your username on GitHub.

You can order a domain name from your favorite registrar like Gandi, or do it later.

Gandi domain

Step 2

Configure Stapy with the full host as the base URL for the prod environment:

source
+--- layout
     +--- common.json

{
  "url.local": "http://127.0.0.1:1985/",
  "url.prod": "https://www.example.com/"
}

The website URL will be here: https://www.example.com/. Without a personal domain name, set https://username.github.io/.

Step 3

This step is optional without a personal domain mame.

We need to tell GitHub Pages our domain name. That can be done by creating a CNAME file containing the domain.

source
+--- assets
     +--- CNAME

www.example.com

The CNAME file in the assets directory will be copied to the website root.

Step 4

Build the website:

python stapy.py build

On Windows double-click on build.py.

The website files to be published are now in the web/prod directory.

Step 5

On GitHub, create a new public repository named username.github.io where username is your username on GitHub.

New GitHub repository

Step 6

Add files to the GitHub repository with:

1. Web interface (beginner)

You can upload files from the web/prod directory to GitHub with the web interface:

Upload files in GitHub

Drag all files, then commit.

2. Git Client (intermediate)

On Windows or macOS you can use a Git client like GitHub Desktop.

On Linux GitKraken is a good client.

3. Command line (expert)

Commit and push all the static files (web/prod) on the GitHub repository.

cd web/prod
git init
git add -A
git commit -m "first commit"
git branch -M main
git remote add origin https://github.com/{username}/{username}.github.io.git
git push -u origin main

Step 7

This step is optional without a personal domain mame.

From the registrar, edit the DNS zone and add a CNAME record for the www subdomain:

Type: CNAME
Host Name: www
Points to: username.github.io
TTL: 1 hour

Step 8

On your GitHub repository, go to Settings > Pages. Enable Pages for the root directory on the main branch.

Add your custom domain (www.example.com) and enforce HTTPS.

Note: GitHub waits for DNS propagation before generating the SSL certificate. This can take a while.