Put It Live on Netlify, Free, in About Two Minutes

Method 1: Drag and drop

The fastest way to go live, and the one to use in Week 4. No Git, no terminal, no build step. If you have a folder with an index.html in it, you are ninety seconds from a URL.

1. Create a free account at app.netlify.com/signup. Email or a GitHub login both work.
2. Get your site folder ready on your computer. Your homepage must be named index.html and it must sit in the root of that folder, not in a subfolder. This is the single most common thing people get wrong.
3. Open app.netlify.com/drop.
4. Drag the folder onto the deploy area, not the files inside it and not a zip you made by hand. Netlify uploads it and starts a deploy.
5. Wait a few seconds. Netlify gives you a live URL like random-words-123.netlify.app. That is a real, public address. Open it on your phone to prove it.
6. Rename it to something you are willing to show a stranger: Site configuration → Change site name. You get yourname.netlify.app. Do this before you put the link anywhere.

How to update a site you already deployed

Dragging a folder to app.netlify.com/drop a second time creates a brand new site with a brand new URL. That is not what you want, and it is how people end up with six half-finished sites and no idea which link is the real one. To update the site you already have:

1. Open your existing site in the Netlify dashboard.
2. Go to the Deploys tab.
3. Drag your updated folder onto the deploy area at the bottom of that tab.
4. Your existing URL now serves the new version. Same link, new content, nothing to re-share.

Method 2: Connect a Git repo

Not required for this program, and not worth learning Git just for this. But if your work already lives in a GitHub repo, connecting it means your site updates itself every time you push, and you stop dragging folders entirely.

1. In Netlify, choose Add new site → Import an existing project.
2. Connect GitHub and pick your repository.
3. For a plain HTML site, leave the build command empty and set the publish directory to the folder holding your index.html (often just /). Netlify only needs a build command if your site has a build step, and yours almost certainly does not.
4. Hit Deploy. From now on, every push to your main branch redeploys the site automatically.

Your own domain, and HTTPS

In Week 9 the site moves from yourname.netlify.app to yourname.com. Netlify does the hard half. A domain costs roughly ten dollars a year and is the only money this program can ask of you, and a clean yourname.netlify.app is a genuinely fine free fallback.

1. Buy the domain somewhere honest: Porkbun and Namecheap are both fine.
2. In Netlify: Domain management → Add a domain, and enter the one you bought.
3. Netlify shows you the DNS records to set. Either point your registrar's nameservers at Netlify (simplest), or copy the records into your registrar by hand.
4. Wait. DNS changes are slow by nature: usually minutes, sometimes a few hours. This is normal and there is nothing to fix while you wait.
5. Netlify issues a free HTTPS certificate automatically once the domain resolves. You get the padlock without doing anything.
6. Set your preferred version (with or without www) so the other one redirects to it instead of splitting your traffic.

Netlify Forms: a contact form with no server

Week 8 asks for one real feature that genuinely works. If you host on Netlify, a working contact form is close to free: add one attribute to your form tag and Netlify collects every submission for you.

1. Turn on form detection first: in your dashboard, go to Forms and select Enable form detection. Do this before the deploy, or Netlify will not go looking for your form.
2. Give your <form> tag three things: name="contact", method="POST", and data-netlify="true". All three matter.
3. Make sure every input has a name attribute too. Netlify uses those names to label what you receive, and an input without one silently goes missing.
4. Deploy. Netlify reads your HTML and finds the form at deploy time, not while you preview locally, so it only starts working once it is live.
5. Submit the form yourself on the live site. This is your Week 8 evidence: a real submission that actually reached you.
6. Read it in the Forms tab in your dashboard, and turn on email notifications so future ones reach your inbox instead of sitting in a panel you forget.

The five errors everyone hits

Every one of these has happened to every intern who came before you. None of them mean you are bad at this.

Netlify's own docs