Your website online free of charge

There are a lot of speculations on the topic, but getting on the Internet can cost you nothing but a little time.

You can hardly set up a large e-commerce website on your own, but if you want to create a small blog or a school project, there are a lot of ways how you can do it absolutely free of charge. Moreover, you do not need to have any specific technical background in how the internet works, let alone programming skills. Although these will be a plus, the fact is all you must have now is desire to learn the basics and to share your ideas.

How the internet works

When you surf the internet, the first thing you see is a domain like google.com or mysite.blogspot.com. In brief, it's the name of the website you type in the browser address bar or get in the search results, and following it connects you with a powerful computer called web hosting server which sends a file to your browser. It contains the data and the instructions on how to show them, and website page is built up for you.

Picking up a domain and web hosting

The name one gives to the website can be registered as a custom, business-like domain with a registrar or as a free, temporary domain with a web hosting provider, and it is the first thing one is going to see while visiting your website. How it works greatly depends on what is programmed in it. Normally, you need to have some coding skills to program a website, but you can also use a website builder which programs it for you. Every website builder has its own capacities, so having a vivid picture of how your future website will look like and knowing what your chosen website builder can do are the essential part of the process.

You should choose wisely, or you will end up in failing to implement your ideas and in switching between domains and platforms to build your website over and over again. 

If you consider a business-like domain, you can get one free for a year from a registrar like Freenom (but keep in mind that you must connect it with a non-commercial website right away, or it will be taken away from you or canceled). You can also consider getting paid domains from one of the most popular registrars like Namecheap (registering domains for a few years is usually cheaper than renewing them later).

Here you can see a list of the website builders and their capacities, limits, advantages and disadvantages.

Platform
Free domain	✓	✓	✓
Custom domain	✓	✓	＄
Code modification	✓	✓	✓
Code encapsulation	✗	✓	✗
URL references	✓	✓	✓
Email references	✗	✗	✓
Phone references	✗	✗	✓
Font family	✓	✓	✓
Font size	✓	✓	✓
Font color	✓	✓	✓
Font decoration	✓	✓	✓
Font background	✓	✓	✓
Tooltips	✗	✗	✓
Line formatting	✓	✓	✓
Ordered lists	✓	✓	✓
Unordered lists	✓	✓	✓
Tables	✗	✓	✓
Special characters and emojis	✓	✓	✓
Custom blocks	✗	✓	✓
Pictures	✓	✓	✓
Videos	✓	✓	✓
Other media	✗	✓	✓
Background picture	✗	✓	✓
Background color	✓	✓	✓
Google Analytics	✓	✓	✓
Custom favicon	✓	✓	✓
Custom title	✓	✓	✓
Billing system	✗	✗	＄

✓ - the feature is available with a free version
$ - the feature is available with a paid subscription
✗ - the feature is not available

As soon as you have made your choice, found your preferable website builder and chosen your domain, you can start building your website. If you have a custom domain, you can connect it with your website. It has never been easier than now, because every registrar or web hosting company has basic instructions (some of them even containing screenshots and video clips) on how to do it, and there are also a number of detailed guidelines you can find and use for help.