How to make a free website, with no sign-up or code

What a small website needs

• A welcome that says what you do, in one line, with a button to the next step.
• What you offer: your services, your menu, your work or the plan for the day.
• Prices, if you have them. People leave sites that make them ask.
• Proof: a few kind words from customers, or pictures of your work.
• How to reach you: an email, a phone number and an address people can tap.

That fits on one to three pages. Most small sites don’t need more.

Make yours, step by step

1. Open Website Maker. There’s nothing to sign up for.
2. Pick a template: a café, a portfolio, a small business or an event. Or start blank.
3. Give your site a name, then open a page and tap a block to change its words, pictures and buttons. The preview is the real page.
4. Add pages along the top with Add a page, and blocks with Add a block: prices, reviews, questions, opening hours, a gallery and more.
5. Link a button to one of your pages by typing its address, like /menu.
6. Pick a theme, a colour and a font, then tap Share.

Put it online at your own address

Sharing gives you a link with your whole site inside it, which is fine for a message or a QR code. For an address of your own, download your site: you get a zip with a web page for each page and your pictures in a folder.

1. Unzip it to get a folder.
2. Open app.netlify.com/drop and drag the folder onto it. It’s online in seconds at an address like your-site.netlify.app.
3. Add your own domain in the host’s settings if you have one. GitHub Pages and Cloudflare Pages take the same folder.

Pictures that load fast

Pictures you add are made smaller in your browser, so the site loads quickly on a phone and still fits in its link. Wide, calm photos work best behind a big welcome. Add a description to each picture: it’s read out to people who can’t see it, and search engines read it too.