How to host your website for free
we all like free stuff but usually when
it's free there's some sort of catch or
you know it's just a crappy product but
not this time before I jump into more
details on this I just want to say I'm
not looking at all the options here
there are other options that what I'm
gonna be talking about but the two
biggest at least that I know of our
github pages and natla Phi that lafay is
what I personally use to host my own
site and I absolutely love it
both Neto Phi and github pages are
extremely easy to use it's gonna be
easier for me to actually be showing you
but before we do that just an important
thing that both of these are only for
static sites by static setting HTML CSS
and some JavaScript you're not gonna be
having like a database on there or
something close to your WordPress or
something like that but just because
it's for static sites only doesn't mean
you can't have a blog or something like
that I have sort of a blog the article
thing on here you can even have a CMS
but I'm gonna be talking more about that
one you know a little bit later in the
video when we're checking out all this
stuff we can do with natla Phi so if
you're already with github which many of
you probably are github pages is
obviously affiliated with github and
that makes it really easy to use I've
used it I've set up sites on it it's
super easy but that said if this videos
gonna be about neckla Phi its what I'm
more familiar with because it's what I'm
hosting my own site on right now it's
also a bit more robust there's a little
bit more you can do with metla Phi and
also I just I want to make it clear this
is not a paid promotion I just really
love the service that they have and more
important than that though I think it's
just a lot of people may not realize how
easy and simple it is to have a host
these days and just how quickly you can
actually get your site up there so I
wanted to show that and just show off
you know how you can do it and as an
added bonus how to do it for free so
with all that out of the way let's jump
on over to their website and check out
how it all works so here we are on their
site now for natla fly you need to have
an account but unlike many other sites a
Google account won't work here so if I
go to sign up you'll see it's gonna be
asking either for github a git lab
bitbucket or you can sign up just
through email I'd suggest using a git
site instead of email as one of the best
features
natla is going to be set up with the
integration of get involved but
obviously you can just use the email
option if you want to and now I
personally use github so I'm going to go
and check that I don't know one nice
thing with neckla file so over github
pages is you can use the other get sites
in there so I'm gonna log in with my
github here so first up it's really easy
you can see I have my personal site is
on here and it's deploying from github
and I also have this little manual
deploy there which was something I was
just playing around with and so if we
want to look at how we can do this the
super easy like insanely easy way is you
can literally just grab something off
your desktop so I have this folder off
screen I'm just gonna grab it you can
see it saying move so I'm just taking a
folder literally off my desktop and I
can drop this here now I've done this on
other computers with other people and it
seems like some accounts for some reason
to ask for a zip file and other ones it
asks for a folder I'm not sure what the
difference was and I don't know if this
was a while ago so I don't know if they
were doing some a be testing or not but
anyway I'm gonna drop this in here yeah
this is my brewery website so you can
see it's now uploading it the site has
not yet been deployed and there we go
it's now published to take about a
minute for that to happen I've had most
sites I've put up here it's been a lot
faster than that
and so I can see the last update was at
843 and I can just click on this link
quite literally and I can visit my site
it's uploaded it's online and it's good
to go
and so that's really cool now obviously
it's using this in randomly generated
URL which isn't ideal but it's nice to
be able to get one up with that easily
and that quickly now you can see right
here I do have domain settings I can
very easily add in a custom domain it's
not hard to do and click here you have
to verify that you have it but it's done
in seconds and once you have your custom
domain set up for free you can set up an
HTTPS which is really cool you know it's
it's setup it's good to go you just set
up your customer domain
come down here and a little click away
and then into be h TPS on your custom
domain which is really really awesome
now doing it this way isn't really using
version control but one thing that is
kinda nice about this
I'm just going to open up this file here
and let's go into my images and let's
just rename or I'll add a new one in
here so I've added in br5
so I'm gonna go over to deploys now and
you can see need to update your site
drag a new folder in so I can just drag
my folder back into here and this one is
published actually that's already done
so it's already been updated everything
the the new version is there and you
just go to your little deploys page drag
your folder up here and you're good to
go which is really awesome the nice
thing with this is you can sort of roll
back through your different versions of
your site so even though I'm not using
version control here like I would be
with get it sort of does it for me it's
easy to roll back for old versions if
you have to the hard way to set things
up is to link to a git repo when I say
hard it's not hard it's just slightly
more work than clicking and dragging a
folder into our browser window here so
let's go back to my overview here
actually let's go back to my site and so
here are my sites we can see that now I
have this as you know my other one here
and it's set to manual deploys but what
if I wanted this not to be on manual
deploys so over on github I have this
whole thing set up here my brewery
website was set up on github to begin
with so if I want I can set up a new
site from git
even though I'm logged in through github
I can still choose to get a continuous
deployment here from one of the other
providers in this case I am still with
github so I'm gonna click on there I'm
already logged in so I don't actually
have to make a change and I'm gonna come
a lot of Forks there one of the ones
that I am following but I'm going to
look for brewery and I can see my two
repo so I'm gonna go on this one I can
choose what branch I want to deploy from
so if you're not deploying from your
master for some reason and you can do
some basic build settings here and go
into some more advanced stuff but I'm
not gonna worry about that yeah we're
gonna see that in a second and I'm gonna
hit deploy so you can see now it is
building my site
and it is published so I can click on
here and I can see that site alive so
already I think that's really really
awesome this site is up and it's live
and it's working and but what I can
actually do now because this is set up
with github if I come over here and
let's just go let me see the text to
your local for example let's make a
change we'll be able to see the beer so
I can come onto here I want to go to my
index I'm just going to edit this page
this way edit this file and let's find
it the beer here is and edit just to
show you you know we can make some
changes so I'm going to commit that
change update that's fine I'm going to
commit that change now this isn't
necessarily the way we should be working
but big change has been committed so if
I come back over to here I'm gonna
refresh this and we should see it might
already be let's go over to my deploys
it's already updated it if you're on a
longer one that has some building stuff
you might see that it's it's doing it
but here you can see it says update
index.html it took three seconds to do
it and if we come back to my site and I
refresh we can see that on this live
site it has been updated so the big
advantage here is anytime you update
your master brand to be repo the site is
automatically updated you don't have to
come back to net Lefroy or do anything
it's just updated on its own you don't
even have to come back in and log in or
anything like that and another cool
thing is once you have your site up and
running you can also have a do some post
processing for you which is a big win in
my books
so on my deploy settings here I'm gonna
come on to post processing and you can
see that we can do some snippet
injection so say you have a Google
Analytics that you want to add in you
can just type the name in there paste in
the code and you want to do it before
the closing body or inside the head so
that's really nice that you can you know
say you have a site that you're already
have up and running and you need to add
a snippet to it you can use this to
automatically
the snippets on all your pages so that's
a really really nice thing right there
there's also asset optimization which
I'm gonna go into my edit settings I'm
right now it's disabled but I can enable
it so I can have it pretty and I can
have it do pretty URLs which means slash
about HTML would just become slash about
which is kind of cool now it does that
by creating extra folders and then
putting an index in the folder and you
can have it if you have a bunch of CSS
files it will concatenate those files
for you which is really really cool it
puts it down into one file you can also
have it minify your CSS so if you're not
doing this on your own end you can have
it done automatically and then the exact
same thing for your JavaScript you can
have it concatenate your JavaScript into
a single file and minify your j/s at the
same time and maybe the coolest thing of
all is compressing images they'll
automatically run it through lossless
image compression you just have to make
sure these are set up now I had a
problem on my own personal site with it
bundling the CSS just because of how I'd
set things up it was causing a bit of an
issue so I did disable the bundle CSS
but otherwise I'm using a lot of these
and it's just nice not to have to you
know if you're an NPM wizard and you're
all doing this already it's all good
but if you're not doing that stuff on
your own and it's nice that this can
automatically happen every time you just
push a change onto github so I think
that's really really cool there's other
things that it can do as well as far as
like split testing so a/b testing forms
I did any functions these are all
included for free so if you want to form
on your website you can have it you can
learn from there Docs I'm not going to
go deep into that right now
for there is pricing that Ingo it's
involved on the forums and the split
testing and stuff like that at one point
it's free still but if you're hitting
out some bigger numbers you might get
start getting charged for those things
if you're hitting bigger numbers you
know that's where things can come in
because well it is free there is a
pricing tier so if we click here and
look at the pricing of it you get one
user so if you need more than one person
logging in that could be an issue but
otherwise you can you can't have
password protected sites which you get
when you start paying but for the most
part you're getting a really really
awesome thing let's go look here we have
the full table so you know you might see
a few things in here but one thing
you'll notice is it's not charging you
for like the it's not asking you to look
for things like how many people are
visiting your site some of those things
do come on so if I see the forms here
for free you're getting a hundreds of
submissions per month so after that if
you're getting more than that you'll
have to start paying for it same thing
you can have people logging into your
site for free you can have a thousand
active users and then after that you
will have to start paying which if you
have more than a thousand active users
of people logging in you can definitely
afford it and then some functions which
are kind of cool but again I get this is
getting a bit more advanced but some
really cool stuff you can do with that
now one thing and the functions this all
sort of plays in with why would it be
free and then turn into paid and it's
because Matloff I just like github sites
is only for static web sites meaning
HTML and CSS and some JavaScript
obviously but you can't host something
like WordPress on these sites I run my
site which has articles though so I do
have like a blog on there I'm doing this
with Jekyll which is a static site
generator and it works great basically
when I add a new post and I push the
change to my master branch and I'll if I
recompiles the entire site and it
literally takes like maybe a minute to
do but now if you're building on a site
for a client they probably don't want to
be dealing with jekyll and pushing
changes to a server they just want to
hit save so net liffe ID does actually
come with a CMS so here's their CMS and
i just said that metal effect comes with
the CSS it doesn't come with the CSS
they have a way of they do have a CMS
that you can integrate into your site
and it works with a static site
generator so this is things like Jekyll
like Hugo and there there's a whole
bunch of other ones as well so it is an
option to build out with a CMS now I've
never personally used it but it's
definitely an option and it is something
that I want to be looking at in
in your future because it might make my
life a little bit easier for putting up
my posts for clients this is a really
big it depends it depends on what the
client's needs are and hopefully you
have that figured out before one line of
code is written at the moment I only use
it for my personal site but it is a
pretty powerful host and I wouldn't
discount using it for clients in the
future it really depends on what they
need but if a simple CMS like this could
work on it I don't see why not
so just to recap what we looked at we
can have net liffe I hear it's a super
awesome and service I'd strongly
recommend it for your personal site as
it says here you connect your repository
you can add in some build settings which
are really simple to set up I have some
basic build settings on my personal one
I just have like a Jekyll build and it
goes and that's it it deploys my website
every time I just push to github and
make a change so really nice you can get
a free HTTP you can link your domain to
it so the only thing you'd be buying is
your domain and they just have some
really cool things you can add onto
there and sort of push the limits a
little bit more with your forms and
other stuff as well their documentation
is really good so this it's definitely a
service I would recommend if you're just
looking you know if you're looking for a
personal site or something like that
100% unless of course you need something
like WordPress or something a little bit
fancier like that and this is just a
quick overview of the things you can do
with Matloff I there's a lot more to it
with their integrations their forms and
the a/b split testing and all of that
stuff so if you're interested in all of
this I really encourage you to go and
check it out if you're not using that or
if you're paying for hosting right now
you just have a simple static site this
is an awesome thing that you could be
using if you're a student and you just
don't have a lot of money and you don't
want to pay for hosting this is probably
a really good solution for you so I
encourage you either check of github
pages which is also an awesome service
or of course natla file which for me I
think is you know it works fantastically
for what I'm using them for I hope you
like this video I hope that you can take
advantage of this and this this can help
you out with your hosting needs and if
you have any questions or any comments
about
feel free to leave a comment below I'll
see if I can help you out you liked the
video hit that thumbs up button and of
course until next time don't forget to
make your corn in the Internet just a
little bit more awesome
How To Create A Website for free - Plus Domain Name & Web Hosting
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