How I built this site for free (and how you can too)

This site costs nothing to run. No hosting fees, no WordPress subscription, no website builder. It’s built with Hugo, hosted on GitHub Pages, and served on a custom domain I pay about $12 a year for.

If you’re in cybersecurity or IT and want a blog that doubles as a portfolio, this is the stack I’d recommend. Here’s how to build one from scratch — even if you’ve never used a terminal before.

What you’ll be building

A static website that looks professional, loads fast, and deploys automatically every time you publish a new post. You write in plain text, run one command, push to GitHub, and it’s live.

The whole setup takes a few hours the first time. After that, publishing a post takes under five minutes.

What you’ll need

A computer running Mac, Windows, or Linux
A free GitHub account
A domain name (optional — you get a free one from GitHub, but a custom domain looks more professional)

No prior coding experience is required. You’ll be using the terminal, but every command is explained.

Step 1 — Install Git

Git is a tool that tracks changes to your files and lets you push them to GitHub. Think of it as a save system for code.

Download it from git-scm.com and run the installer. Once it’s installed, open your terminal (search “Terminal” on Mac, “Command Prompt” or “PowerShell” on Windows) and run:

git --version

If you see a version number, Git is installed.

Step 2 — Install Hugo

Hugo is the engine that turns your text files into a website. It’s fast, free, and widely used.

Mac:

brew install hugo

(If you don’t have Homebrew, install it first at brew.sh)

Windows:

winget install Hugo.Hugo.Extended

Linux:

sudo apt install hugo

Confirm it worked:

hugo version

Step 3 — Create your site

Navigate to where you want your site folder to live. Your home directory is fine:

cd ~
hugo new site mysite
cd mysite

This creates a folder called mysite/ with everything Hugo needs. It’s empty for now — no theme, no content yet.

Step 4 — Install a theme

A theme controls how your site looks. Hugo has hundreds of free themes at themes.gohugo.io. This guide uses PaperMod — it’s clean, fast, and works great for technical blogs.

First, initialise Git in your site folder:

git init

Then install PaperMod:

git submodule add --depth=1 https://github.com/adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod.git themes/PaperMod

Step 5 — Configure your site

Open the hugo.toml file in your site folder with any text editor (Notepad, TextEdit, or VS Code). Replace everything in it with this:

baseURL = "https://yourusername.github.io/mysite/"
title   = "Your Site Title"
theme   = "PaperMod"

[params]
  defaultTheme = "auto"

  [params.homeInfoParams]
    Title   = "Your Name"
    Content = "A short description of what your site is about."

  [[params.socialIcons]]
    name = "github"
    url  = "https://github.com/yourusername"

[[menu.main]]
  name   = "About"
  url    = "/about/"
  weight = 10

Replace yourusername with your actual GitHub username and fill in your title and description.

Step 6 — Write your first post

Hugo has a built-in command to create new posts:

hugo new content posts/my-first-post.md

This creates a file at content/posts/my-first-post.md. Open it in a text editor. You’ll see something like this at the top:

+++
title = "My First Post"
date  = 2026-01-01
draft = true
+++

Change draft = true to draft = false, then write your post below the +++ line using plain text. You can use Markdown for formatting — **bold**, # Heading, `code`, and so on.

Step 7 — Preview locally

Before publishing, you can see exactly how your site looks on your own computer:

hugo server -D

Open http://localhost:1313 in your browser. Your site is running locally — no internet required. Any changes you save will appear instantly.

Press Ctrl + C to stop the server when you’re done.

Step 8 — Create a GitHub repo

Go to github.com/new and create a new public repository. Name it mysite (or whatever you called your folder). Don’t tick “Add a README”.

Step 9 — Set up auto-deploy

This is the part that makes GitHub automatically rebuild your site every time you push. Create this folder structure inside your site folder:

.github/
  workflows/
    hugo.yml

On Mac and Linux you can do this in the terminal:

mkdir -p .github/workflows

Then create a file called hugo.yml inside that folder and paste in exactly this:

name: Deploy Hugo site to GitHub Pages

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  workflow_dispatch:

permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write

concurrency:
  group: pages
  cancel-in-progress: false

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      FORCE_JAVASCRIPT_ACTIONS_TO_NODE24: true
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          submodules: recursive

      - name: Setup Hugo
        uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v3
        with:
          hugo-version: latest
          extended: true

      - name: Build
        run: hugo --minify

      - name: Upload artifact
        uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
        with:
          path: ./public

  deploy:
    environment:
      name: github-pages
      url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: build
    env:
      FORCE_JAVASCRIPT_ACTIONS_TO_NODE24: true
    steps:
      - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
        id: deployment
        uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4

Step 10 — Push to GitHub

Run these commands in your site folder, replacing the URL with the one GitHub gave you when you created the repo:

git add .
git commit -m "initial commit"
git branch -M main
git remote add origin https://github.com/yourusername/mysite.git
git push -u origin main

Step 11 — Enable GitHub Pages

In your GitHub repo go to Settings → Pages → Source and select GitHub Actions.

Go to the Actions tab — you’ll see a workflow running. Wait for the green checkmark. Your site is now live at https://yourusername.github.io/mysite/.

Step 12 — Connect a custom domain (optional)

If you want your own domain instead of the default GitHub URL, buy one from a registrar like Namecheap or GoDaddy — .com domains run about $10–15 a year.

Once you have it, go to your repo → Settings → Pages → Custom domain and enter your domain.

Then log into your registrar and add these DNS records:

Type	Name	Value
A	@	185.199.108.153
A	@	185.199.109.153
A	@	185.199.110.153
A	@	185.199.111.153
CNAME	www	yourusername.github.io

DNS changes can take a few minutes to a few hours to propagate. Once GitHub shows the DNS check as passing, tick Enforce HTTPS.

Finally update hugo.toml to use your new domain:

baseURL = "https://yourdomain.com/"

Push that change and you’re done.

Publishing new posts

From this point on, publishing is three commands:

git add .
git commit -m "new post"
git push

GitHub Actions rebuilds and deploys your site automatically. It’s live within a minute.

Why bother?

If you’re job hunting in cybersecurity or IT, a blog is one of the highest-leverage things you can do. It shows you can communicate technical concepts, demonstrates that you’re actively learning, and gives employers something to read beyond a resume.

The setup is a talking point in itself — you used Git, GitHub Actions, DNS configuration, and a static site generator. That’s a non-trivial technical project, and it’s yours.

What you’ll be building#

What you’ll need#

Step 1 — Install Git#

Step 2 — Install Hugo#

Step 3 — Create your site#

Step 4 — Install a theme#

Step 5 — Configure your site#

Step 6 — Write your first post#

Step 7 — Preview locally#

Step 8 — Create a GitHub repo#

Step 9 — Set up auto-deploy#

Step 10 — Push to GitHub#

Step 11 — Enable GitHub Pages#

Step 12 — Connect a custom domain (optional)#

Publishing new posts#

Why bother?#