About BuildFromZero

BuildFromZero is a free course about how websites actually get made. It starts at the beginning — before the domain, before the tool, before anyone has said the word "hosting" at you — and walks all the way to a live site you understand.

There are twelve lessons and a handful of reference pages. They are meant to be read in order, but nothing stops you jumping to the one you need at midnight.

What this actually is

A textbook, not a funnel. Each lesson tells you what a step is for before it tells you how to do it, because the "how" is easy to look up and the "why" is what stops you making an expensive choice by accident.

Tools appear by name throughout, as examples of a category. None of them is ranked, scored or reviewed here. There is no "our pick", because your situation is not our situation, and the honest answer to most tool questions is that two or three would have worked fine.

Start with how to make a website if you want the whole map on one page.

The promise

We are not going to sell you anything.

Not a course upgrade, not a template pack, not a consultation, not a coupon code with our name in it. There is no paid tier and there never will be, because the moment the recommendations pay us, you would be right to stop trusting them.

You will also read the words "you do not need this yet" more often than you expect. That is deliberate. Most first websites fail from too many decisions, not too few features.

Who this is for

People building their first website: sole traders, freelancers, volunteers, students, and anyone who has been told to "just get a site up" and would like to know what that means.

It is also read by people who have already built something and want to understand what is underneath it. The lessons on how builders work and where lock-in comes from are written for exactly that reader.

It is not for you if you want a ranked list of the best tools. That list exists elsewhere, several hundred times over.

How these lessons stay current

Every lesson carries a published date and a last-updated date, and the updated date changes only when the content does.

Prices, free-tier terms and legal deadlines rot fastest, so those are checked against the vendor's or the regulator's own documentation rather than other articles, and dated in the text where it matters. Where something could not be confirmed at a primary source, it is written as an estimate and labelled as one.

When a lesson is wrong, we would rather find out from you than from nobody.

How this site earns

Barely, and on purpose.

There are two affiliate links across the entire site. Both go to products named as examples in context, and neither pays enough to influence anything written here. Everything else — every documentation link, every tool mentioned — earns nothing at all. The affiliate disclosure sets out the details plainly.

Talk to us

Questions, corrections and "this bit confused me" notes are all welcome, and several lessons exist because a reader asked. The contact page has the address.