How to Publish Web Content

Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to get into the nitty gritty of publishing your HTML and CSS files on the internet. That’s okay. It’s not too complicated, actually. I’ll give a brief overview here.

Purchase Hosting and a Domain Name

To upload your content to the internet, you first need to have a place to put it.

Hosting refers to renting file space on a server. Hosting companies rent out space on their servers and allow web users to access it via your domain name.

A domain name is a unique address through which people can find your website. You can check to see if the domain you want is available through a free service like Name.

Fortunately, most hosting companies will let you rent a domain name and hosting space at the same time. However, you can also purchase a domain name and then rent hosting space separately. Regardless, once you select your domain and hosting space, you usually rent it on a yearly basis, and you can renew it indefinitely.

I have been using StableHost for years to both register my domain name and rent hosting space, and it has served me well.

Upload Files via an FTP Application

After you have secured hosting and a domain name, how do you get your files there? One method is to use a file transfer protocol (FTP) application like FileZilla. I can’t recommend FileZilla enough; it’s free, open source, and works on all operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux).

Install FileZilla and follow the Mozilla Developer Network’s helpful guide for uploading files to a web server. It includes FileZilla screenshots and walks you through step by step.

After you upload your files, your website will be live. And that’s it!