How to make free website

How to make free website

Before you start, read this

This tutorial is about how to create a free website. This is not the same with other websites that offer free builders with a slow response time. This method will give your website a fast enough response time for decent to fairly huge web users. You will have your own VPS or Virtual Private Server. You will have full access to your server and files. You can fully customize your website or hire a web developer.

This step-by-step process involves technicality. Your main goal is to build a website for free without monthly payment. This is the trade-off instead of a ready-made website. You either do this for your business or just to test it out but I assure you that at the end of this tutorial, you will be able to create a website that will be able to handle up to 1, 000 concurrent visitors.

Expect that you will spend 1 to 3 hours building your website.

Don't know any code?

No problem — you don't need to.

I wrote this guide specifically for beginners. You can just copy and paste all the code provided. Just follow the instructions. There will be pictures on each step that will help you check if you are on the right track.

At the end of this process, you will be able to create a mid-level website that is perfect for an average business website.

What a website needs

A domain name. (ex. www.facebook.com, google.com)
Hosting server - This is where your code is compiled. (ex. Oracle, Godaddy, Hostinger)
Your website's code - In this tutorial, we will use WordPress.

Step 1. Choose a domain name (www.your-website-name.com)

First things first: What is a Domain Name?

Domain name is the web address of your site. Without a domain name, you will be able to access your website via a public IP address (ex. 101.xx.xx.123). A website can function without a domain name, but your users will not be able to remember your website. Numbers are harder to remember than words. Many website owners prefer to have a domain name using their company name.

In choosing a domain name, What I recommend are the following:

Your domain name should be the same as your company name.
You omit the www. Just use your-company.com
Try to get .com extension of a domain name.

Be aware that domain names are being targeted for business gain. Many businesses are hoarding domain names. They buy domain names early on and resell them at a higher price. Reserve your domain name now by buying them early.

Free domain names usually end with .net, .org, .co.uk, .ca, .de, or other free extensions. Google SEO prefers .com, .org, and .io website extensions. I will talk about SEO in another tutorial. We will focus on getting a domain name first.

If you have already decided what domain name you are going to use for your website, choose either register to a free domain or reserve one now. Click one of the choices below and a new tab will open a step-by-step process of registering your domain name.

(Free) Register a free domain name using Freenom (https://www.freenom.com/)
(Paid) (min 8.00 USD/yr.) Buy your domain name using NameCheap (https://www.namecheap.com/)

Note: There are many paid domain name server websites. However, for now, we choose NameCheap.

After registering your domain name, you can now close that tab.

We will now proceed to step 2 and set up you're hosting.

Step 2. Register for a free web hosting plan

In this tutorial, we will use the Oracle Always-Free web hosting plan. This is the only web hosting plan that offers always-free Virtual Private Server. The only catch is that you need to stick with the free tier limit. This part is a technical one. Don't worry, I will guide you every step of the way.

Free and reliable Virtual Private Server

I've been developing websites for years now. In my experience, only Oracle gives free web hosting which did not incur a single cent on my credit card. My website has been running for almost two years now and currently serves almost 5, 000 users per day.

From my experience…

If you have a café business and you want your customers to visit your website, this free web hosting server is more than enough to serve your customers.

I wrote this blog mainly to help small to medium businesses set up their reliable website. I have tested this with businesses like roofing, restaurants, weddings, and small e-commerce websites.

Enough of this, I will now guide you to setting up your server.

Setting up your own Oracle Always-Free web hosting server

Setting up your account is a bit tedious and needs to have a valid input. Oracle verifies users using a credit card. Your account information needs to be exactly the same as your credit card information. I have provided a note and a video link on where many people failed to register and the solution to it.

Please be patient and follow every step of the way.

Register an Oracle account.

There are 12 steps involved in registering an account up to signing in. In each step, I will provide a screenshot to guide you throughout the process.

Step 1. Open a web browser like Chrome or Firefox then navigate to this URL - https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/

You will be directed to this page. Click “Start for Free”. You will be presented with a registration page.

Enter the following information to create your Oracle Account.

Choose your Country
Enter your Name and Email

Once you have entered a valid email address, select the Verify My email button. The screen will appear as follows after you select the button.

Step 3. Go to your email. I used my Gmail account to sign up. You will see an account verification email from Oracle in your inbox. The email will be similar to the following.

Step 4. Click “Verify email”. It will open a new tab to continue your registration process.

Then, enter the following information to create your Oracle Cloud Free Tier account:

Choose a Password
Enter your Company Name

Your Cloud Account Name will be generated automatically based on your inputs. You can change that name by entering a new value. Remember what you wrote. You'll need this name later to sign in.

Choose a Home Region. Your Home Region cannot be changed once you sign up.

Click Continue

Step 5. (Important) Enter your Address information and your mobile phone number. Click Continue.

Note: Use the address that is reflected on your credit card. Many failed on this step and were not able to fully register. This is how Oracle verifies the user.

Step 6. Next, click the Add payment verification method button.

Step 7. Choose the verification method. In this case, click the Credit Card button. Enter your information and payment details.

Note: This is a free credit promotion account.

This is where many people failed to proceed. I found a YouTube video that fixed my problem. This video is from IdeaSpot, which helps me set up my account. Watch the video if you need help. Here's the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsK4YIIR69w

Step 8. Once your payment verification is complete, review and accept the agreement by clicking the check box. Click the Start My Free Trial button.

Step 9. Your account is provisioning and should be available soon! You might want to log out as you wait for your account to be provisioned. For me, it took 5 mins. But usually, it will take effect from 5 to 30 mins. After that, you'll receive two emails from Oracle. One email will be the initial notification that provisioning is underway. The other email will be a notification that provisioning is complete. Here is a copy of the final notification.

Step 10. Sign in to your account. Go to cloud.oracle.com. Enter your Cloud Account Name and click Next. This is the name you chose while creating your account in the previous section. It's NOT your email address. If you've forgotten the name, see the confirmation email.

Step 11. Click Continue to sign in using the oraclecloudidentityservice.

Step 12. Enter your Cloud Account credentials and click Sign In. Your username is your email address. The password is what you chose when you signed up for an account.

If you have followed everything, you should be able to sign in anytime. We will now proceed to Step 3, which is creating a web server.

Step 3. Create a Web Server

In this process, you will provision an instance to create a web server. Basically, you need to install a machine. It's like installing an operating system like Windows and installing the programs.

Before we proceed

To create your website, you will be using WordPress. In creating a web server, we need to install the software that is needed to run WordPress.

As of writing, the WordPress version is 6.4.3. The requirements to run this specific version are:

PHP version 7.4 or greater.
MySQL version 8.0 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.4 or greater.
Apache or Nginx - We will use Nginx

What you need

Operating System - We will use the Ubuntu Server operating system.
Web Server - We will use Nginx
Database Server - We will use MySQL to store your website's information.
Compiler - We will use PHP a scripting language to run your WordPress.