Publish with Netlify

This is the moment your website goes from a folder on GitHub to a real, live page anyone in the world can open. The tool that does it is Netlify, and it connects straight to the GitHub repository you just made. It’s free, it’s fast, and it quietly handles the technical security bits for you. About ten minutes, and your site is on the internet.

What is Netlify, and why use it?

Netlify is a free service that takes your website’s files from GitHub and publishes them to the internet at a real web address. It also secures your site with HTTPS automatically, and re-publishes it on its own every time you make a change.

Think of Netlify as the bridge between your GitHub repo and the public. It reads your files, serves them quickly from servers around the world, and keeps your site online. Two things it handles that used to be real headaches: security (the padlock and “https” in the browser bar) and updates (change a file on GitHub, and your live site refreshes by itself). And for a normal small-business website, all of this is free.

How do I create a Netlify account?

Go to netlify.com and sign up — choose Sign up with GitHub, since you already have a GitHub account. It’s free, and signing up this way makes the next step seamless.

When you sign up with GitHub, Netlify and GitHub are already introduced to each other, which saves you a step in a moment. There’s no credit card and no paid plan to think about for a site like yours.

How do I connect my repository and publish?

From your Netlify dashboard, click Add new project (you may see it labeled “Add new site”), choose Import an existing project, pick GitHub, authorize access, and select your website repository. Then click Deploy — and in a minute or two, your site is live.

Step by step:

1. In Netlify, click Add new project → Import an existing project.
2. Choose GitHub as your provider. If prompted, authorize Netlify to access your repositories. (If your repo is private, you’ll grant access to that specific repo — Netlify walks you through it.)
3. Select your repository from the list — the my-bakery-website repo you made.
4. On the settings screen, you don’t need to change anything. Your site is just files — there’s no build step — so leave the build command empty, and make sure the publish directory points to the top level where your index.html lives (the default is usually right).
5. Click Deploy (the button may say “Deploy” or “Publish”).
6. Netlify uploads and publishes. In a minute or two, you’ll see a green “Published” and a link.

That link is your live website. Click it — you’re on the internet.

What’s my web address, and is it secure?

Netlify gives you a free address that looks like random-name.netlify.app, and your site is automatically secured with HTTPS — the padlock in the browser — at no cost and no effort on your part.

• The random name is just a starting address. You can change it to something tidier in your site settings — for example, sunrise-bakery.netlify.app. (And in the final guide, you’ll point your own domain — like sunrisebakery.com — at it, which replaces this address entirely.)
• The HTTPS padlock is handled for you. Netlify automatically issues a free security certificate (from a service called Let’s Encrypt), so visitors see the padlock and your site is encrypted. This used to be a genuinely fiddly, sometimes paid chore. Here it’s invisible and automatic — there’s nothing for you to do.

Is Netlify really free? What’s the catch?

For a normal small-business website, yes — genuinely free, and not a trial. Netlify’s free plan comfortably covers the traffic a local business gets; you won’t get a surprise bill for having an ordinary website.

Here’s the honest mechanics, because it’s worth knowing. The free plan runs on a monthly credit allowance (currently 300 credits). Two things spend those credits: publishing an update to your site — each one costs a small amount, and roughly 20 updates a month fit comfortably — and ordinary visitor traffic, which for a local business barely registers. For a site you update now and then, you’ll stay well inside the free allowance. The one way to hit the ceiling is a burst of activity, like publishing dozens of changes in a single day; and even then, Netlify simply pauses your site until your credits refresh next month rather than charging you. The free plan can’t bill you a cent — no credit card, no surprise invoice. (You’ll also notice other paid features in the dashboard, like team tools and AI agents, but those are separate from simply hosting your site.)

How do I update my site later?

Change the file in your GitHub repo — upload a new index.html — and Netlify automatically re-publishes within a minute. You never have to touch Netlify again to make a change; GitHub is your control panel.

This is the real payoff of setting it up this way. Want to change your hours, swap a photo, or update your prices? Go back to Claude, ask for the change, download the new file, and upload it to GitHub in place of the old one. Your live site updates on its own. A change request to Claude can be as simple as:

Attach your current index.html, get the new one back, upload it to GitHub, and you’re done. The whole loop — Claude builds, GitHub stores, Netlify publishes — keeps working for you, every time.

Your website is live on the internet, secure, and updating itself whenever you make a change. There’s just one thing left to make it fully yours: replacing that netlify.app address with your own domain name — like yourbusiness.com. It’s the step everyone finds intimidating, and the final guide makes it simple. That’s Point your domain, the last guide in this series.