How I Built My First Website Using Notepad and Free Hosting

No coding background. No fancy tools. Just curiosity and stubbornness.

I'm not a developer. I don't have a computer science degree. Until recently, HTML looked like hieroglyphics to me.

But I wanted to build a website. Not pay someone hundreds of dollars. Not use a drag-and-drop builder that makes everything look the same. Actually build something.

Turns out, you can. And it costs exactly $0.

            The total cost of this website: Free domain? No — I owned the domain already. But the hosting, the tools, everything else? Zero dollars.
        

What I Used

Notepad++

A free text editor. Nothing fancy. Just somewhere to type code.

Free

Netlify

Free hosting. Drag your folder, your site is live. That simple.

Free

Google

When I got stuck, I searched. "How to center a div" is a rite of passage.

Free

Browser DevTools

Press F12 on any website to see how it's built. Best teacher there is.

Free

The Process

Step 1

Learn the absolute basics

HTML is just tags. <p> is a paragraph. <h1> is a heading. <a> is a link. That's like 80% of what you need to know. CSS is just "make this thing look like this." Color, size, spacing. Not rocket science.

Step 2

Create a folder on your computer

I called mine "spiderweb." Inside it, I created a file called index.html. That's your homepage.

Step 3

Write some HTML

Start ugly. My first version was white text on a white background (I forgot to set the background color). It happens. Double-click the file to open it in your browser and see what you made.

Step 4

Add CSS to make it not ugly

Put a <style> section in your HTML. Change the background color. Change the font. Center something. Feel powerful.

Step 5

Put it on the internet

Go to Netlify. Sign up (free). Drag your folder onto the page. Boom — you have a live website with a weird URL like "resilient-beignet-be610e.netlify.app".

Step 6

Connect your domain (optional)

If you own a domain, point it to Netlify. Free SSL certificate (the padlock). Now it looks legit.

What I Learned

You don't need to be an expert. You need to be willing to Google things and try stuff.
The code doesn't have to be perfect. If it works, it works. You can clean it up later.
Mistakes are how you learn. I broke things constantly. That's the process.
AI can help. I used AI to generate code and explain things. No shame in that. It's a tool.
Start simple. This site is just HTML and CSS. No JavaScript. No frameworks. Just files.

The hardest part isn't the code. It's believing you can figure it out. You can.

Is It Worth Learning to Code in 2025?

Honestly? You don't need to become a programmer. AI can write code now.

But knowing enough to understand what's happening — to read code, to tweak things, to tell AI what you actually want — that's valuable. You don't need to be fluent. You need to be functional.

This website took me a few hours to build. Not because I'm smart. Because the tools are that good now.

Want to try it yourself? Start with the basics.

View the HTML & CSS Cheat Sheet