Serve the website

You need a domain name and web hosting together to set up a website. A domain name is your website’s address on the internet, what you type in the browser’s URL bar, where people can access your website. Domain names have mainly two parts separated by a dot. The first part is the website name which can be a combination of letters and numbers, whereas the second part is the domain extension like .com, .org, .net, etc. Each domain is a unique web address.

Web hosting is the storage location where your website content files are placed. It’s like the home of your website. If your domain name was the address of your house, the actual house is your hosting server. You need both to create a website.

You can start with registering a domain name with a domain registrar company. You can register a domain name for a minimum period of one year most of the time. Then, you can buy a hosting plan and link it with your domain name. You can buy a domain and hosting from the same company as a bundle or buy them separately and link them with some extra steps.

If you are looking for a domain registrar, there are many options including:

• Domain.com
• GoDaddy
• Google Domains

Also, you can buy a hosting plan from the same company.

Host on Github for free

Github users have one free “user” website that lives at http://yourusername.github.io. Github provides built-in Jekyll support and you can simply put your unbuilt Jekyll blog on the master branch of your user repository for Github to build the static website and serve it for you.

To activate the Github domain for your username, follow this guide in the Introduction to Jekyll workshop. Do not forget to update the website address on _config.yml file.

You can also use your domain name to point to Github pages:

• Go to the root of your blog’s repository and edit the CNAME file to include your domain name. The CNAME file is generated by Github after you activate Github Pages for your repository.

• Go to your domain name registrar and add a CNAME DNS record pointing your domain to Github Pages:

  • type: CNAME
  • host: www.yourdomain.come
  • answer: username.github.io
  • TTL: 300

It might take some time for this record to be propagated.

Other options

Jekyll generates your static site to the _site directory by default. You can transfer the contents of this directory via FTP or any other file transfer method to almost any hosting provider.

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