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Redson Dev · Idea

WebBeginnerAges 13–17A weekend

Ship a personal website this weekend

Published April 22, 2026

A real domain, a real site, a real link in your bio — built from scratch with HTML, CSS and one cheap domain. No tutorials, no frameworks, just the actual web.

What you'll need

  • A laptop with VS Code installed
  • $10–15 for a domain (Namecheap, Porkbun)
  • A free hosting account (Cloudflare Pages or Netlify)
  • A GitHub account

Step-by-step

  1. 01

    Sketch one page

    Pen and paper. Header with your name. A photo. Three sentences about what you do. Three projects with one screenshot each. Contact link. That's the whole site.

  2. 02

    Build index.html

    VS Code → new file → type `!` and hit Tab. You get an HTML5 boilerplate. Fill in <h1>, <p>, <img> tags. No frameworks. No jQuery. No npm.

  3. 03

    Style it with one CSS file

    Pick ONE good Google Font. Pick ONE accent color. Use system fonts for body text. 90% of beautiful websites do exactly this.

  4. 04

    Push to GitHub

    Create a public repo. `git init && git add . && git commit -m 'first site' && git push`. Your code is now online.

  5. 05

    Deploy with Cloudflare Pages

    Sign up free at pages.cloudflare.com → Connect to GitHub → pick the repo → Deploy. You get a live URL in 60 seconds.

  6. 06

    Buy and connect a domain

    On Namecheap, search yourname.dev or yourname.me. After purchase, in Cloudflare Pages → Custom domain → enter the domain. Cloudflare walks you through DNS.

Tips

  • Done is better than perfect. A live ugly site beats a perfect Figma file every time.
  • Add an OG image (a 1200×630 PNG) — your link shares with a preview instead of looking like spam.
#web#html#starter#portfolio
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