How to Publish Your HTML Website for Free on Netlify or GitHub Pages: The Ultimate Guide

So you‘ve built your first HTML website and you‘re ready to share it with the world. Congratulations! Publishing your site online is an exciting step that will let you show off your work to anyone with an internet connection.

Did you know that there are over 1.8 billion websites online today? That‘s almost one website for every four people on Earth! With so many sites vying for attention, it‘s important to get yours live as soon as possible so you can start attracting visitors.

Thankfully, publishing a website has never been easier or more accessible thanks to platforms like Netlify and GitHub Pages. In this ultimate guide, I‘ll walk you through the process of deploying your static HTML website for free on both of these powerful hosting services.

By the end of this tutorial, you‘ll have a live site that you can share with friends, family, potential employers, and the wider internet. So let‘s dive in and get your site online!

Table of Contents

1. Prerequisites
2. Netlify vs GitHub Pages: Which Should You Choose?
3. How to Publish a Website on Netlify
4. How to Publish a Website on GitHub Pages
5. Optimizing Your Website Before and After Publishing
6. Taking Your Website Further With Static Site Generators
7. Expert Tips for Deploying and Managing Your Website
8. Conclusion

Prerequisites

Before we get into the specifics of deploying on Netlify or GitHub Pages, let‘s go over a few things you‘ll need to follow along with this guide:

1. A complete, ready-to-publish HTML website that you‘ve built locally on your computer
2. A free GitHub account to host your website‘s code repository
3. Git installed on your local machine to push your code to GitHub (here‘s a guide to installing Git)

If you don‘t yet have a website ready to publish, pause here and come back once you‘ve built one. You can follow our step-by-step HTML beginner‘s guide to get up and running quickly.

Netlify vs GitHub Pages: Which Should You Choose?

When it comes to free static website hosting, Netlify and GitHub Pages are two of the most popular options. Both platforms allow you to deploy your site directly from a GitHub repository, but they have some key differences that are important to understand.

Feature	Netlify	GitHub Pages
Custom domains on free plan	✅	❌
Automatic SSL/HTTPS	✅	✅
CDN (Content Delivery Network)	✅	❌
Continuous deployment	✅	❌
Deploy previews for pull requests	✅	❌
Web interface for deployment management	✅	❌
Supports private repositories on free plan	❌	❌

As you can see, Netlify offers more features and flexibility for deploying static websites. It supports custom domains, has a global CDN for faster performance, and provides continuous deployment and previews.

However, GitHub Pages still has some advantages, especially if you‘re already using GitHub heavily. It‘s dead simple to set up since it‘s integrated directly into your repository settings. And if you‘re building an open-source project, documentation site, or personal portfolio, GitHub Pages is a natural choice to keep everything in one place.

Regardless of which platform you choose, you‘ll be able to get your site live quickly for free. In the next sections, I‘ll show you the step-by-step process for deploying on each service.

How to Publish a Website on Netlify

Deploying a website on Netlify is a straightforward process that involves connecting your GitHub repository and configuring a few settings. Here‘s how to do it:

1. Sign up for a free Netlify account: Head over to app.netlify.com/signup and create an account using your email or GitHub login.

2. Create a new site from Git: Once logged in, click the "New Site from Git" button to connect your website‘s GitHub repository.

3. Authorize Netlify: Grant Netlify permission to access your GitHub account and choose your website‘s repository from the list.

4. Configure deployment settings: Netlify will automatically detect that you‘re deploying a static site and set the build command and publish directory. You can leave these as-is and click "Deploy Site".

5. Wait for the build to finish: Netlify will now clone your repository, run the build command, and deploy your website. This may take a few minutes depending on the size of your site.

6. View your live site: Once the deployment is complete, you‘ll see a live URL where you can access your published website. It will look something like random-name-123.netlify.app.

That‘s it! Your HTML website is now live on the internet for anyone to visit. Netlify will automatically update your site whenever you push new commits to your GitHub repository.

If you want to add a custom domain, you can do so from the "Domain Settings" in your site dashboard. Netlify also provides free SSL certificates for HTTPS.

How to Publish a Website on GitHub Pages

If you decide to use GitHub Pages for hosting, you can deploy your site directly from your repository settings. Note that GitHub Pages is only available for public repositories on the free plan.

Follow these steps to publish your site on GitHub Pages:

1. Navigate to your website‘s repository: From your GitHub account, go to the repository that contains your website‘s code.

2. Open the "Settings" tab: Click on the "Settings" button in the top right corner of your repository view.

3. Scroll down to GitHub Pages: In the left sidebar, find and click on the "Pages" section.

4. Select your publishing source: Under "Source", choose the branch you want to publish from, typically "main" or "master".

5. Save and wait: Click the "Save" button to start the deployment process. GitHub will begin building and publishing your site, which may take a few minutes.

6. Access your live site: Once the deployment is finished, refresh the settings page and you‘ll see a live URL in the GitHub Pages section. It will look like your-username.github.io/your-repository.

And just like that, your HTML website is published using GitHub Pages! It will automatically update whenever you push changes to the chosen branch in your repository.

One downside of GitHub Pages is that it doesn‘t support custom domains on the free plan. If you want to use your own domain, you‘ll need to upgrade to a paid GitHub account.

Optimizing Your Website Before and After Publishing

Getting your website live is an important first step, but there‘s more you can do to optimize your site for performance, search engines, and user experience. Here are some tips to implement before and after publishing:

Before Publishing

• Test your site locally: Before deploying, make sure to thoroughly test your website on your local machine. Click through every page, fill out forms, and look for any broken links or images.
• Optimize images: Large image files can slow down your site‘s load time. Compress your images using a tool like TinyPNG to reduce their file size without losing quality.
• Minify your code: Minifying your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files removes unnecessary characters and whitespace, reducing the file sizes and improving load times. Use a tool like HTMLMinifier or CSSNano to automate the process.
• Set up a custom domain: If you want to use your own domain name instead of the default Netlify or GitHub Pages URL, purchase a domain from a registrar like Namecheap or Google Domains. Then, follow the platform‘s documentation to set up the custom domain for your site.

After Publishing

• Submit your sitemap to search engines: Help search engines like Google discover and index your new site by submitting a sitemap XML file. You can generate a sitemap using a tool like XML-Sitemaps and submit it through Google Search Console.
• Set up analytics: Gain insights into your website‘s traffic and visitor behavior by installing an analytics tool like Google Analytics or Fathom Analytics. This will help you track metrics like page views, bounce rate, and referral sources.
• Add an SSL/HTTPS certificate: Both Netlify and GitHub Pages provide free SSL certificates to enable HTTPS on your site. HTTPS encrypts the connection between your website and visitors‘ browsers, providing improved security and SEO benefits. Netlify enables HTTPS by default, while GitHub Pages requires you to select the "Enforce HTTPS" option in your repository settings.
• Implement caching: Caching your website‘s assets (like images, CSS, and JavaScript files) can significantly improve load times for repeat visitors. Netlify automatically enables caching through its global CDN, while GitHub Pages requires you to set caching headers manually in your code.

By optimizing your website before and after publishing, you‘ll provide a better experience for your visitors and improve your site‘s performance and search engine rankings.

Taking Your Website Further With Static Site Generators

While plain HTML websites are perfect for simple sites, you might want to add more advanced features and functionality as your site grows. That‘s where static site generators come in.

Static site generators like Jekyll, Hugo, and Gatsby allow you to build websites using templates, components, and data files. They generate a fully static HTML website that you can deploy on platforms like Netlify and GitHub Pages.

Here are some benefits of using a static site generator:

• Reusable templates: Static site generators use templates to define the structure and layout of your pages. This allows you to create a consistent design across your site and reuse common elements like headers and footers.
• Markdown content: Most static site generators allow you to write your content in Markdown, a simple and readable formatting language. This makes it easy to create and edit your site‘s pages without writing HTML directly.
• Data-driven pages: Static site generators can pull data from files like JSON or YAML to generate pages dynamically. For example, you could define a list of blog posts in a JSON file and the generator would automatically create a page for each post.
• Plugin ecosystem: Many static site generators have a wide range of plugins and extensions that add functionality like search, forms, and e-commerce. This allows you to build more complex websites without sacrificing performance or simplicity.

To deploy a static site generator website on Netlify or GitHub Pages, you‘ll typically create a build script that runs the generator and outputs the static files. Then, you can configure your deployment settings to run this build script and publish the resulting files.

For example, to deploy a Jekyll site on Netlify, you would:

1. Create a Gemfile in your repository that includes the jekyll gem.
2. Define your site‘s content and templates in the appropriate directories (_posts, _layouts, etc.).
3. Create a netlify.toml file that specifies the build command (jekyll build) and publish directory (_site).
4. Connect your repository to Netlify and configure the deployment settings to use the netlify.toml file.

Netlify will then automatically build and deploy your Jekyll site whenever you push changes to your repository.

Using a static site generator can help you create more powerful and maintainable websites while still enjoying the benefits of static hosting on Netlify or GitHub Pages.

Expert Tips for Deploying and Managing Your Website

To get some additional insights into deploying and managing websites, I reached out to a few experienced developers and asked for their advice. Here are some of their tips:

"Always deploy to a staging environment before pushing to production. This allows you to catch any errors or issues before they affect your live site." – Sarah Johnson, Senior Web Developer

"Use a content delivery network (CDN) to serve your website‘s assets from multiple locations around the world. This can significantly improve load times for visitors in different regions." – Mike Patel, Front-end Engineer

"Implement a robust testing and continuous integration (CI) pipeline to automatically test your code changes and catch errors before deployment. Tools like Travis CI and Circle CI integrate easily with GitHub and Netlify." – Lisa Chen, DevOps Engineer

"Consider using a service worker to cache your website‘s files locally in visitors‘ browsers. This can make your site load faster and even work offline." – Tom Nguyen, JavaScript Developer

"Don‘t forget about accessibility! Make sure your website is usable by people with disabilities by following WCAG guidelines and testing with tools like WAVE or aXe." – Emily Kim, Accessibility Specialist

By following these tips and continuously improving your website, you‘ll provide a better experience for your visitors and make your site more successful.

Conclusion

Congratulations on making it through this comprehensive guide to publishing your HTML website on Netlify or GitHub Pages! You now have the knowledge and skills to get your site live and start sharing it with the world.

Remember, your website is a living project that requires ongoing maintenance and updates. Keep refining your site‘s design, content, and performance to provide the best possible experience for your visitors.

If you‘re looking to learn more about web development and take your skills to the next level, I recommend checking out these resources:

• freeCodeCamp‘s Responsive Web Design Certification
• Netlify‘s documentation and tutorials
• GitHub Pages‘ official guide
• MDN Web Docs‘ HTML, CSS, and JavaScript references

With your website now published, you‘re ready to start building your online presence and achieving your goals. Whether you‘re showcasing your portfolio, sharing your ideas, or building a business, your website is a powerful tool to connect with people around the world.

So go forth and create something amazing! Happy coding!