A live website in 10 minutes. No software to install—everything happens in your browser. By the end, you’ll have a site on the open web and understand how it works well enough to start making it your own.
What you’ll need
A free GitHub account (we’ll create this in Step 1)
A web browser
10–15 minutes
No coding or web experience necessary. You’ll be editing text files and clicking buttons.
Step 1: Choose your template
Pick the starting point closest to what you’re building. Not sure? See the template overview for details on each option, or just start with Portfolio—you can always change direction later.
Step 2: Create a GitHub Account
What is GitHub? Think of it like Google Drive for websites. GitHub stores your site files and hosts your website for free. No ads, no subscription fees. It hosts millions of open-source projects and websites and facilitates collaboration.
Important: Replace YOUR-USERNAME with your actual GitHub username, using the exact capitalization.
Your repository name will become part of your website address, so choose something simple and descriptive.
Naming rules:
All lowercase letters
Use hyphens instead of spaces: medieval-maps not medieval maps
Examples:
medieval-maps-monsters
civil-war-hospitals
english-101-spring-2026
Don’t stress—you can rename it later or start over if needed.
When ready, click the green “Create Repository” button.
Step 5: Configure Your Site
If you named your repository YOUR-USERNAME.github.io, you need to make one quick edit:
Click the “Code” tab (top left)
Find and click _config.yml in the file list
Click the pencil icon (✏️) to edit
Make sure the baseurl: line is empty (nothing after the colon):
baseurl:
Click “Commit changes” (green button, top right)
Click “Commit changes” again in the popup
Why empty? Since your site lives at the root (username.github.io/), you don’t need a subdirectory path.
If you named your repository something other than the template name, you need to make one quick edit to get your site running.
Click the “Code” tab (top left)
Find and click _config.yml in the file list
Click the pencil icon (✏️) to edit
Change the baseurl: line to match your repository name exactly:
baseurl:/your-repository-name/
Click “Commit changes” (green button, top right)
Click “Commit changes” again in the popup
Important: Capitalization matters! My-Site is different from my-site.
Step 6: Publish Your Site
Now tell GitHub to turn your files into a live website.
Click the “Settings” tab (top right)
Click “Pages” in the left sidebar
Under “Build and deployment”:
Source: Make sure “Deploy from a branch” is selected
Branch: Change from “None” to “main”
Click “Save”
Your site is now building! This takes about 1-2 minutes.
To see your live site:
Click the “Actions” tab (top of page) to watch the build
When the yellow dot turns green, your site is live
Go back to Settings → Pages and you’ll see your website URL
Two Important URLs to Bookmark in your browser
Repository (where you edit): http://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/YOUR-USERNAME.github.io
Website (what the world sees): https://YOUR-USERNAME.github.io/
Your site is live
You now have a website on the open web, built from plain text files under your control. Every change you make is versioned—you can always undo mistakes—and the whole thing runs on infrastructure that’s free, open, and not going anywhere.
This is the same workflow professional developers use daily. The tools are just text files and version control—nothing proprietary, nothing you can’t take with you.