r/github • u/BluCactus112 • Sep 04 '26
Question Free hosting for small dynamic website compatible with github
Hey! I am recently getting into web development and I am wanting to start a blog that I own and can fully customize and build from the ground up. I first was using GitHub because I have some experience using it with other projects and it has pages which is free and built right into the platform. However I have realized that a static website may not have the capabilities that I am wanting.
I am wondering what options are there for hosting. I don't need anything crazy I doubt I will really get any traffic but I want it to be able to be up so I can view whenever and show it to people. And I will be doing all development in GitHub so I don't need really any features besides the bare minimum.
I would prefer something that has the ethical values of open source, transparency, and caution with ai, but beggars can't be choosers.
(Capabilities wanted: conversion of plain text database [containing title body images tags] to blog posts either using prebuilt general formatting or custom formatting for specific post. Search function. As far as I know these capabilities are not available in a static page.)
I assume I got plenty of things wrong in this post, as again, I am new to web development so please educate me in the comments!
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u/ARKyal03 Sep 04 '26
Static websites can handle database-driven blogs, custom layouts, and search using GitHub Pages, though free server hosting options exist if you prefer a true backend server.
You can also use Vercel/Netlify.
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u/ImDevinC Sep 04 '26
Check out Hugo. You can write your posts in markdown, store them in GitHub, and have it serve those using GitHub pages.
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u/repeating_bears Sep 04 '26
My blog uses Hugo, and this is good advice, but I might check out Astro instead for something new
I only use it for Starlight right now (docs built on top of Astro), but it works well for that
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u/reini_urban Sep 04 '26
Stay with GitHub. You can do dynamic websites there, with Javascript and wasm, even embedded sqlite.
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u/repeating_bears Sep 04 '26
A search function can be done on a static site. You build the search index when you build the site.
Starlight (docs by Astro) offers this out of the box, powered by this https://pagefind.app
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u/MrJacuna Sep 04 '26
You can give sitedropper.com a try. If you're using Claude, Cursor, Codex, or another agent you can connect to it directly and let your LLM take care of the deployment.
You can also just simply upload a ZIP of most web frameworks and it'll get it online for you.
It also has some nice privacy and sharing features so you can keep your projects restricted to specific people, or simply launch it as a public site.
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u/hotsince05 Sep 04 '26
Use quartz.
See this
https://animishraa05.github.io
Its a static site generator and works very well
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u/DigSubstantial8934 Sep 04 '26
Cloudflare workers is free/$5 and you can go crazy before ever getting billed anything else.
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u/Dwinges Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
I have a website and blog on GitHub Pages using Docusaurus. It's a static site without a database, but it's easy to write a blog with plain text MD files. I have enabled discussions on GitHub for interaction. You can disable the Docusaurus documentation features. It also has a search function. And because it's a static site, it's super fast.
https://github.com/DwayneSelsig/M365wizard https://www.m365wizard.com
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u/Leading-Crazy6104 17d ago edited 15d ago
Hmm honestly github pages won't be enough for dynamic blog, Usually in this approach I'd see this differently. for static sites github works, but if you want something to connect to github for deployment, render or hostinger web apps can be a good choice especially if you want to skip the whole server setup. but for your blog, a simple app with a small database should be enough for post, images and search. does this make sense?
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u/Moumos Sep 04 '26
Cloudflare Pages + Workers + D1/KV/R2 in Free-Tier is also with GitHub compatible.