Netlify
Your site works. Only you can open it. Deploying is the step that turns a folder on your laptop into a link you can send.
“Netlify is basically YouTube, but for code.” You drag your files on, it keeps them for you, and it hands you back a link.
Built the site but it has never left your machine? That part is here: Start in VS Code →
Localhost
Why nobody else can open it
Run a site on your own machine and the address begins with localhost.
Localhost means this computer, and no other.
- Have you only ever seen it on your own screen?
- Could you open it on your phone right now?
- Who have you already promised a link to?
It is a private rehearsal. Nobody can reach localhost: not on their phone, not from the next room, not ever.
Deploying
A folder becomes a web address
Deploying copies your files onto a computer that is always on, run by someone else.
That computer answers to a public address, so anyone with the link gets in.
- Which files actually make up the site?
- Is this the finished version, or still half built?
- Who gets the link first?
You never push single files at it. You always create a whole new deploy, and it switches over once every change is ready. Its docs call that atomic: “your site is never in an inconsistent state while you’re uploading a new deploy.”
Your address
The link you actually send people
Netlify gives every project a name ending in .netlify.app.
You can point a domain you own at it afterwards.
- Is the name something you would say out loud?
- Do you own a domain already, or buy one?
- Where will this link live: a profile, an email, a CV?
Netlify calls it the Netlify subdomain, its docs’ term for “the default domain with the form [name-of-your-site].netlify.app given to each site.”
Drag a folder onto a web page
No terminal, no repository, no waiting. This is the gentlest on-ramp there is.
- 1
Sign in to Netlify first. Drop a project while logged out and Netlify publishes your files exactly as they are, with no build step, and keeps the link behind a temporary password until you claim it.
- 2
Open Netlify Drop. The same drag-and-drop area sits at the bottom of your Projects page.
- 3
Drag the folder holding your site files on. Not the folder of packages your tools installed.
- 4
Open the link it gives back, then send it. That is the whole job.
To change something later, edit the files and drag the folder on again, at the bottom of that project’s Deploys page.
Same result, different amount of setup
Start with the first one. Move on to the next when the dragging starts to annoy you.
Drag and drop
no terminal at all- A folder onto a web page.
- Drag it again to update.
The command line
from your project foldernetlify deploygives a draft link.netlify deploy --prodmakes it live.
Connect GitHub
it updates itself- Netlify deploys when you push.
- Nothing goes live uncommitted.
This site runs on Netlify too, set up by a netlify.toml file sitting in its root folder.
- Localhost: your computer only, however finished it looks.
- Deploying: your files onto an always-on computer, at a public address.
- Drag and drop: a folder onto Netlify Drop, and you have a link.
- Then GitHub: push a change and the live site follows on its own.
This week: put one thing you have already built on the internet, however small.
Build the thing first: Start in VS Code → Next project needs a key of its own: API keys → The whole thing, project by project: AI Building Course →
Do it with someone. Everything here is free and you can run it alone. If you would rather work through it with me, one to one, book a free 30-minute chat. No pitch.