Up until recently, my knowledge of hosting and deploying a website was next to nonexistent. My initial research turned out to be fruitful however, as I quickly learned that a website’s build could be hosted for free on GitHub and the advantages of doing so over the traditional method of renting a server and deploying updates manually.

The main downside of the latter option, quite simply, is cost. While not tremendously expensive, we’re still talking about around $120 for the SSL Certificate alone plus $80 for the rental itself. That’s per year, every year. Also, updates and new content to the site are either handled by FTP or through third-party applications, none of which I like using. On the other hand, hosting on GitHub (or similar venues) is free and pairing it with a service like Netlify (which is also free) enables instantaneous, auto-deployment of any new content that’s pushed to the repository. That can be done directly from a command line or simply by dragging new files to the Git upload panel.

It became a no-brainer overnight; I opted to host and deploy the site that way. The learning curve wasn’t too steep but I did get stumped on a few things. For instance, the distinction between my domain registrar’s DNS nameservers and Netlify’s own DNS system wasn’t obvious to me at first glance and GitHub’s interface felt a little intimidating for a new user. But it all worked out in the end and I am satisfied with the end result, from both production and performance standpoints.