Get your own piece of internet real estate in 5 minutes

There are tons of options out there for publishing content on our planet's global communication network: Instagram, Substack, Mastodon, YouTube, Reddit. These are all great, you should use whatever works, wherever you find your audience.

There is one way of putting stuff on the internet that is rarely advertised, because no one really makes money from it: making your own website.

You don't need to be a "coder" to have your own piece of the internet. If you can maintain a google doc, you can maintain a web page

I love Robin Sloan's philosophy on this. He talks about making software like making a home-cooked meal

People don’t only learn to cook so they can become chefs. Some do! But many more people learn to cook so they can eat better, or more affordably. Because they want to carry on a tradition. Sometimes they learn because they’re bored! Or even because they enjoy spending time with the person who’s teaching them.
...
This messaging app I built for, and with, my family, it won’t change unless we want it to change. There will be no sudden redesign, no flood of ads, no pivot to chase a userbase inscrutable to us. It might go away at some point, but that will be our decision. What is this feeling? Independence? Security? Sovereignty?

This last piece is really important. Websites that I made 20 years ago still work. The companies I used for hosting don't exist anymore, but I can easily move my website anywhere else (just like copying text out of one note app into note app!)

step 0: sign up to Glitch for web hosting

Glitch.com is one website I really like that gives us free web hosting.

Sign up: https://glitch.com/signup

I made this template for you:

step 1: copy this template

1. Open this template: https://glitch.com/edit/#!/personal-website-template-v2
2. Click "Remix to Edit" in the top right

step 2: edit the HTML

Change the title of the web page by editing the text. Text between <h1> tags is a "header". <p> stands for paragraph, etc.

step 3: share your website

1. Click "settings" on the left, then "Edit project details" to change the domain name of your website

1. Click "open in a new window" in the preview pane

congrats! that is your website link, anyone on the planet with that URL can read your words!!

That's it!

• you can use this to collect links to all your work online
• google or ask chatGPT "how do I do X in HTML", the sky is limit!
• every website you've ever seen is HTML. You can just copy any part of it and put it on your website!!!
• you can upload pictures (drag and drop them into the Assets tab), or embed youtube videos (click "share" then "embed")

For inspiration, see:

• https://neocities.org/
• https://sundaysites.cafe/

The other free web host I like to use is GitHub Pages. It's nice if you prefer editing your website files on your computer vs in the browser.