It’s easier than ever to get a website up and running with having to spend a penny or handing over your credit card in some “trial”. That is, if you don’t mind putting a bit of work in. For an example of the kind of site that can be made, well you on one! This site was made using the steps I’m about to outline

Steps

Step 1: Install Hugo

We will be building the website with Hugo. Hugo is a simple to use static website builder that is great for getting something simple set up without too much worry. Check out the quick start guide to see how you can set it up on your computer.

Step 2: Setup Hugo Site

Now make a quicksite running hugo new site <sitename> where <sitename> is an identifier you’d like to use for your site.

Step 3: Find a Theme

Check out the themes page and pick one that looks good to you. This website uses the smol theme by “morph”. How to install it, or any other theme, can be found above in the quick start.

Step 4: Connect to a GitHub repo

Now we need to connect to a GitHub repo. Create a repo, it can be private, and push the site you made in step 2. The steps on how to push it will be shown in the new repo.

Step 5: Log In/Sign Up to Netlify

Netlify can use your GitHub account to log in, and from there you can create a new site, using your repo created in the previous step.

Step 6: Go Through the Set Up Process

Netlify should be able to determine that the site is using hugo and give the correct build options. The build command can just be hugo and the directory of the build should be public nothing else needs to be set.

Step 7: Finished

Now you should have a site setup with netlify domain. If you want your own domain, you will need to find one and attach it. This is easy itself and there are many tutorials on it.