Almost-zero cost website setup

Note: this setup is for intermediate level developers only. Someone with little or no experience in programming or technical knowledge may find this difficult to follow.

I used a number of free tools and libraries to set up my current website, so that the only cost I have to pay for is the domain name ($17 AUD per year at the time of writing- it seems that to get a professional domain name there is no way around having this cost). Here are the various services I used to set up my website:

• Github Pages for the web hosting

• Contentful for the content management system

• 11ty for the static site generation

• Behold.so for the social media integration (instagram(

• ShareThis for the social sharing features on the blog posts

Please note that while these services are free to start, some of them have limitations on their plans. Check your requirements before using them. As for me, I only needed something basic so this was acceptable for me. There is also some programming knowledge (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Markup) required to get this working.

I used the tutorial to connect 11ty and Contentful on GitHub Pages. There’s a bit of setup with getting the custom domain to work correctly, but once it’s done, it’s just a matter of updating the Liquid files for layout and other things, and populating the content on Contentful. Everything should update every time stuff is uploaded onto GitHub or when Contentful content gets published. It took me some time to set up, but it’s worth it if you have the skill and the time to do it.