How to Create and Host a Website for Free

What you’ll end up with

A real website on the internet with your own address — for example, https://your_login.github.io.

Try it right here — edit the code and see the result immediately:

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  <title>Ivan Ivanov — photographer</title>
  <style>
    body {
      font-family: system-ui, sans-serif;
      margin: 0;
      min-height: 100vh;
      display: grid;
      place-items: center;
      background: #0f1115;
      color: #fff;
      text-align: center;
    }
    h1 { color: #d97757; font-size: 2.5rem; margin: 0; }
    p { color: #9ca3af; max-width: 32rem; }
    a {
      display: inline-block;
      margin-top: 1rem;
      padding: 0.6rem 1.4rem;
      background: #d97757;
      color: #fff;
      border-radius: 0.5rem;
      text-decoration: none;
    }
  </style>
</head>
<body>
  <div>
    <h1>Ivan Ivanov</h1>
    <p>Photographer. I shoot life, not poses.</p>
    <a href="#">My work</a>
  </div>
</body>
</html>

What you’ll need

• A ChatGPT account — chat.openai.com (the free plan is enough)
• A GitHub account — github.com
• ~15 minutes of time

Nothing else. Everything runs right in your browser — no payment needed.

Three words you’ll meet below, in plain language:

• Repository — a project folder on GitHub. It holds your files and the history of every change to them. That’s all.
• Commit — “save this version”, with a short note saying what changed.
• Deploy — put the saved version online so the world can see it.

Step by step

Common mistakes

• The file isn’t named index.html — e.g. Index.html or main.html. GitHub Pages looks for exactly index.html, in lowercase.
• You pasted a snippet instead of the whole file — the page renders half-empty or not at all. Ask ChatGPT for the complete file again.
• The repository doesn’t follow the pattern — login-github-io or mysite.github.io won’t work. You need the exact format: login.github.io, where login is your own GitHub username.
• The repository was created as Private — GitHub Pages is free only for public repositories. Check it in Settings → General → Danger Zone → Change repository visibility.
• You never confirmed your GitHub email — the site silently refuses to publish. Check your inbox for the confirmation link.
• Forgot to Sync — a Commit without Sync keeps the changes only on your machine.
• Checking immediately — deployment takes 1–2 minutes. Refresh the page a bit later.

What’s next?

Once the basic site works, you can: connect your own domain, add a blog page, ask ChatGPT for a dark/light theme with a toggle — just ask it for the whole file again each time and repeat steps 6–7.

Two useful next stops: Your first coding agent builds pages like this from your own computer, and Git for vibe coders explains the undo button behind Commit and Sync. More step-by-step guides like this one live in the Learn section, and new material shows up in the blog.