Build Free Web Pages with GitHub Pages & AI Tools

Understanding GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages transforms your repository into a live website, serving HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files directly from GitHub’s servers. The service is completely free for public repositories and supports custom domains with HTTPS security. However, it’s limited to static content — no server-side languages like PHP or Python, and no database integration.

This tutorial aims to demystify the setup process, showing you how to configure GitHub Pages and leverage AI tools for rapid development.

Step-by-Step Setup

1. Create Your GitHub Repository

First, create or log into your GitHub account. From your dashboard, click the “New” button to create a repository. For a personal site, name it username.github.io (replacing “username” with your actual GitHub username). For project sites, use any descriptive name—your content will be hosted at username.github.io/repository-name.

Critical requirement: Set your repository visibility to “Public.” GitHub Pages only hosts free sites from public repositories.

2. Enable GitHub Pages

Navigate to the GitHub repository Settings tab, then select “Pages” from the sidebar under “Code and automation.” Under “Build and deployment,” choose “Deploy from a branch” and select your main branch with the /root folder as the source.

After saving, GitHub automatically builds your site. Within minutes, your website becomes accessible at the generated URL.

3. Add Your Content

Create an index.html file in your repository root—this serves as your homepage. You can add this directly through GitHub’s web interface or push files from your local machine using Git. GitHub Pages supports Jekyll by default for blog-style sites, but plain HTML/CSS/JavaScript works perfectly for custom designs.

Integrating AI Tools

Modern AI coding assistants can dramatically accelerate website development through “vibe coding”—describing what you want and letting AI generate the code. Tools like Claude, ChatGPT, or GitHub Copilot can create HTML templates, CSS styling, and JavaScript functionality based on natural language descriptions.

The workflow is iterative: generate code with AI, commit changes to your repository, review the live site, then refine with additional AI prompts. This approach makes web development accessible even without deep coding knowledge.

Advanced Considerations

For complex build processes beyond Jekyll, GitHub Actions provides custom deployment workflows. You can also configure custom domains and enable HTTPS through the Pages settings, giving your free site a professional appearance.

GitHub Pages excels for documentation, portfolios, landing pages, and content-focused sites where server-side processing isn’t required. The combination of free hosting, version control, and AI-assisted development creates a powerful, cost-effective solution for establishing your online presence.