How to Publish a Polished No-Code Website for Free in 10 Minutes Flat

The web is more accessible than ever thanks to the rise of "no-code" development. Now anyone can create and publish professional-grade websites without writing a single line of code.

Just how big is the no-code movement? Consider these stats:

• No-code platforms like Webflow and Bubble have grown 5x in the last 2 years and are expected to be used by over 50% of companies by 2023. (Source: Forrester)

• Over 1 million new no-code apps were built in 2021 alone, up from just 50,000 in 2018. (Source: Zapier)

• 60% of developers say they use no-code tools to speed up development, and 47% say no-code will be a focus in the coming years. (Source: IDC)

As a seasoned full-stack developer, I‘ve built countless websites from scratch. But I‘m increasingly impressed by how far no-code tools have come. With the right workflow, non-technical folks can create sites that rival those built by professional coders.

In this step-by-step guide, I‘ll walk you through one of the slickest no-code workflows I‘ve found – using GitHub Pages to publish a fully-customized static site in literally minutes, no credit card or software installs required.

Whether you‘re a blogger, small business owner, or just looking to create an online portfolio, this approach is quick, flexible, and completely free. Let‘s dive in!

Step 1: Create a free GitHub account

The first step is to sign up for a free GitHub account if you don‘t have one already.

GitHub is best known as a place for developers to store and collaborate on code, but it also offers a powerful free hosting service called GitHub Pages. Over 1 million sites are published via GitHub Pages! (Source: GitHub)

Step 2: Fork a no-code website template

Next, we‘ll grab a pre-made website template to use as a starting point. Find a "no-code template" repository on GitHub that appeals to you.

Some great places to browse templates:

• Jamstack Templates – A collection of 400+ themes for static site generators
• HTML5 Up – Slick responsive HTML5 templates that are easy to customize
• Jekyll Themes – 400+ pre-made themes for the popular Jekyll static site builder

For this example, let‘s use the Ananke template, a minimalist theme built on Hugo with 500+ stars on GitHub.

To make a copy of the template in your own GitHub account, click the green "Use this template" button, give your new repository a name like "my-awesome-site", make sure it‘s public, then click "Create repository from template".

Within seconds you‘ll have your own version of the website template code ready to customize!

Step 3: Enable GitHub Pages

From your new website repository, click the Settings tab, then scroll down to the "GitHub Pages" section:

Under "Source", select the main branch, keep the default /(root) setting, then click Save. GitHub will enable free hosting for your site at a URL like https://yourusername.github.io/my-awesome-site/.

At this point you have an exact copy of the template site live on the web. Not too exciting yet, but we‘re about to make it your own.

Step 4: Customize your site‘s content and style

Now for the fun part – customizing your site without writing code!

In your website repository, look for a configuration file named something like config.yaml or _config.yml and click the pencil icon to edit it. This file controls site-wide settings like the title, description, navigation menu, etc.

Make a few changes to personalize it, for example:

title: My Awesome Site 
description: The raddest site on the web

Click the green "Commit changes" button to save. Within a minute, your site will automatically update with the new configuration.

To customize the actual page content, browse the content/ or _posts/ directory and edit the Markdown (.md) files in a similar way.

Markdown is a simple format for writing web content without HTML tags. For example, to create a heading you just use pound signs:

# Top level heading
## Sub-heading
### Sub-sub-heading

Refer to this Markdown cheat sheet to see how to add links, images, lists, and more.

You can also change your site‘s visual theme by editing the files in the css/ or assets/ directory, depending on the template. Common style tweaks:

• Change fonts in typography.css
• Adjust colors in variables.css
• Swap the logo or favicon in images/

Making design tweaks does require some CSS knowledge, but many templates have extensive theme docs with "no-code" customization options – for example, Wowchemy‘s docs.

Step 5: Preview and publish changes

Here‘s the magical part: any time you edit a file in GitHub, your site automatically rebuilds and deploys the update within a minute or so. Just refresh your live URL and voila – the changes are live!

If you want to preview changes locally before publishing, download your repository as a zip file, unzip it, and open the index.html file in a web browser.

You can also configure GitHub Actions to get a preview link for every change before merging to the live site. This tutorial shows how.

Go further with static site generators

The template-driven no-code workflow we just walked through is powered by static site generators like Jekyll, Hugo, Gatsby and others.

Static site generators take your Markdown content and template files as input and spit out a complete static website (plain HTML/CSS/JS) as output. Compared to traditional CMS platforms like WordPress, static sites have some key advantages:

• ⚡ Blazing fast performance
• 🔒 Secure by default
• 🆓 Cheaper/free to host
• 🌎 Deploy anywhere

Static sites can be hosted for free on platforms like GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages and more. Some quick stats on the growth of static sites:

• 32% of developers say they‘ve deployed a static site in the past year. (Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2020)

• Gatsby and Netlify, two popular static site tools, serve over 1.5 billion pageviews/month across 1M+ sites. (Sources: Gatsby, Netlify)

• Static sites have seen 267% growth since 2015 while traditional CMS have declined 13% over the same period. (Source: HTTP Archive)

If you want to dive deeper into static site generators and customize your site even further, I recommend the following resources:

• StaticGen – Leaderboard of the most popular static site generators with links to documentation
• Hugo Quickstart – In-depth intro to building with Hugo, one of the most popular SSG
• Gatsby JS Tutorial – Step-by-step guides to creating Gatsby sites, which can pull data from anywhere
• How to Host on Netlify – Netlify makes it a snap to deploy static sites via Git

Real-world no-code inspiration

Need inspiration for what‘s possible with no-code static sites? Check out these slick examples:

• Spotify.Design – Spotify‘s design system documentation site built with Hugo and hosted on Netlify (190K+ monthly visitors)
• Impossible Foods – Marketing site for plant-based meat alternative startup, built with Gatsby (175K+ monthly visitors)
• Sourcegraph – Documentation hub for popular developer platform, built with Hugo (80K+ monthly visitors)
• Twilio Docs – Docs for Twilio‘s communication APIs, built with Gatsby (500K+ monthly visitors)

These enterprise-grade sites demonstrate the power and flexibility of the "no-code" static site approach.

FAQ

Still have questions about getting started with no-code static sites? Here are answers to some common ones:

What‘s the catch – how can this be free?

It‘s true that most web hosting has a cost, but static site hosting is an exception. Platforms like GitHub Pages, Netlify, and Vercel offer free static site hosting as a way to attract developers to their other paid services. You can take advantage of the free tiers without any committment or credit card required.

How can I add a contact form, comments, search or other dynamic features?

Just because static sites have no backend server doesn‘t mean they can‘t be interactive. You can easily add dynamic features via embedded scripts and third-party services.

For example, Formspree and Basin provide simple form endpoints you can use for contact forms. For comments, try embedding Disqus or Utterances. Algolia‘s API makes it simple to add search to static sites.

With a little JavaScript knowledge, almost anything is possible on modern static sites.

How do I add a CMS so non-developers can edit content?

Most static site generators support headless CMS integration for a more user-friendly editing experience. A headless CMS provides a web interface for editing site content and an API for your SSG to fetch the content during the build process.

Some popular headless CMS options that work well with static sites:

• Netlify CMS (open source, maintained by Netlify)
• Forestry (CMS for Jekyll and Hugo sites)
• Sanity (flexible platform with a powerful content studio)
• Contentful (API-driven CMS used by enterprises)

All of these offer free tiers so you can get up and running quickly. Check out this comparison to understand the differences.

When should I not use a no-code static site?

Static sites are incredibly powerful and flexible, but there are some cases where you might be better off with a traditional CMS like WordPress:

• Lots of user-generated content (e.g. forums, social networks)
• Complex e-commerce functionality
• Reliance on server-side rendering or processing
• Large editorial teams

For most other use cases – blogs, portfolios, documentation, marketing sites, etc. – the static site approach offers unbeatable simplicity, performance and cost savings.

The future is no-code

I hope this in-depth guide has shown you how quick and easy it is to build a fully custom, professional-grade website without writing code or paying for hosting.

As a developer who has hand-coded hundreds of sites over the years, I‘m continually amazed by how far no-code tools have come. Modern static site generators, headless CMS, and automated deployment platforms have made web publishing more accessible than ever.

Looking ahead, I believe no-code development will only accelerate. Forrester predicts that 65% of all development will be low-code/no-code by 2024. And Gartner forecasts that 66% of large companies will use at least four low-code tools by 2024.

Of course, no-code doesn‘t mean no-developers. Even the most intuitive tools require some technical know-how to implement and customize. But what no-code does mean is that many more people – from marketers to designers to ops folks – will be empowered to build software visually.

As a developer, I see this as a huge opportunity. No-code tools can automate tedious aspects of web development and free us up to focus on higher-level problems. They also make it easier to rapidly prototype ideas and test new concepts without investing significant development resources.

In short, no-code is a win-win. Non-technical folks can build sites and apps faster than ever, while developers can work more efficiently and strategically.

So what are you waiting for? Dive in and see what you can create without code. You might just surprise yourself!