Create Your Site
A live website in 10 minutes. No software to install—everything happens in your browser. By the end, you’ll have a site on the open web and understand how it works well enough to start making it your own.
What you’ll need
- A free GitHub account (we’ll create this in Step 1)
- A web browser
- 10–15 minutes
No coding or web experience necessary. You’ll be editing text files and clicking buttons.
Step 1: Choose your template
Pick the starting point closest to what you’re building. Not sure? See the template overview for details on each option, or just start with Portfolio—you can always change direction later.
Step 2: Create a GitHub Account
What is GitHub? Think of it like Google Drive for websites. GitHub stores your site files and hosts your website for free. No ads, no subscription fees. It hosts millions of open-source projects and websites and facilitates collaboration.
- Go to GitHub and create a free account
- Choose a username (this will be part of your website address for now)
- Verify your email address
- You’ll land on your GitHub homepage at
http://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME
Step 3: Start with a Template
Rather than start from scratch, you’ll copy a complete starter template with example content.
- Go to the template repository
- Click the green “Use this Template” button (upper right)
- Select “Create a new repository” from the dropdown
Step 4: Name Your Repository
For your portfolio, we recommend using your GitHub username for the cleanest URL.
Name your repository exactly: YOUR-USERNAME.github.io
For example, if your GitHub username is sarah-martinez, name your repository:
Why? This gives you a clean, professional URL at the root level:
- ✅
https://sarah-martinez.github.io/ (clean!)
- ❌
https://sarah-martinez.github.io/my-portfolio/ (less clean)
Important: Replace YOUR-USERNAME with your actual GitHub username, using the exact capitalization.
Your repository name will become part of your website address, so choose something simple and descriptive.
Naming rules:
- All lowercase letters
- Use hyphens instead of spaces:
medieval-maps not medieval maps
Examples:
medieval-maps-monsterscivil-war-hospitalsenglish-101-spring-2026
Don’t stress—you can rename it later or start over if needed.
When ready, click the green “Create Repository” button.
If you named your repository YOUR-USERNAME.github.io, you need to make one quick edit:
- Click the “Code” tab (top left)
- Find and click
_config.yml in the file list
- Click the pencil icon (✏️) to edit
- Make sure the
baseurl: line is empty (nothing after the colon):
- Click “Commit changes” (green button, top right)
- Click “Commit changes” again in the popup
Why empty? Since your site lives at the root (username.github.io/), you don’t need a subdirectory path.
If you named your repository something other than the template name, you need to make one quick edit to get your site running.
- Click the “Code” tab (top left)
- Find and click
_config.yml in the file list
- Click the pencil icon (✏️) to edit
- Change the
baseurl: line to match your repository name exactly:
baseurl: /your-repository-name/
- Click “Commit changes” (green button, top right)
- Click “Commit changes” again in the popup
Important: Capitalization matters! My-Site is different from my-site.
Step 6: Publish Your Site
Now tell GitHub to turn your files into a live website.
- Click the “Settings” tab (top right)
- Click “Pages” in the left sidebar
- Under “Build and deployment”:
- Source: Make sure “Deploy from a branch” is selected
- Branch: Change from “None” to “main”
- Click “Save”
Your site is now building! This takes about 1-2 minutes.
To see your live site:
- Click the “Actions” tab (top of page) to watch the build
- When the yellow dot turns green, your site is live
- Go back to Settings → Pages and you’ll see your website URL
Two Important URLs to Bookmark in your browser
- Repository (where you edit):
http://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/YOUR-USERNAME.github.io
- Website (what the world sees):
https://YOUR-USERNAME.github.io/
Your site is live
You now have a website on the open web, built from plain text files under your control. Every change you make is versioned—you can always undo mistakes—and the whole thing runs on infrastructure that’s free, open, and not going anywhere.
This is the same workflow professional developers use daily. The tools are just text files and version control—nothing proprietary, nothing you can’t take with you.
Next step
Make Your First Edit — change something on your site and see it go live.