Hosting guides

Written and verified by engineers who run shared hosting for a living. Every step is tested on a live account before it ships.

Three overlapping document pages with a path traced across them, representing a series of hosting guides.

How to host a website, step by step

How to host a website

What web hosting actually is, the four things every hosted site needs, and how to get a real site online today — written by engineers who run shared hosting.

What is web hosting?

A plain explanation of what a web host does, what the different types are, and how to work out which one you actually need.

How to host a website for free

What free hosting really gives you, where every provider draws the line, and how to tell whether free is the right answer for your project.

Point a domain at your host

Nameservers or A records, what actually happens when you change them, and how to migrate a live site without downtime.

How to host a WordPress site

Installing WordPress on shared hosting, the two settings that break most installs, and the caching step that decides whether your site stays up.

How to host a static website

Plain HTML sites are the easiest and fastest thing to host, and usually the cheapest. Here's how to put one online and why it beats a CMS for most small sites.

How to host a website from home

You can run a web server on your own machine. Here's how it works, what goes wrong, and an honest look at whether it's worth doing.

How to host a website without a domain

You do not need to buy a domain to put a site online. Here is what a free subdomain gives you, what it costs you, and when to upgrade.

How to host a school project website

A site your teacher can open from a link, online in an evening, with nothing to pay and nothing to install.

How to host a website on a VPS

What a VPS actually gives you over shared hosting, what it takes to run one safely, and an honest test of whether you need one.

How to host a Node.js app

Shared hosting cannot run Node, and no setting changes that. Here is why, and the three places that can.

How to host a Python web app

Django and Flask need a process that stays running. Shared PHP hosting has none. What to do instead, and when static output is enough.