# Build a new website in 1 hour > From a blank page to a working website on your own domain. With AI, free hosting and not a single line of code. ## What we'll really do in an hour Let's be honest from the start: in an hour we won't build an online shop or a complex system. But we'll build what most small companies actually need — **a small four-page website**: - **Home** — who you are and what you offer; - **Services** (or **Products**) — what exactly people can get from you; - **About us** — why you're worth trusting; - **Contact** — how to reach you. On your own domain, working on phones, hosted for free. And without a single line of code. ## The key point: you won't build the website In this lesson you won't learn HTML, and you won't need to program anything. You'll learn something more useful and longer-lasting — **giving AI a task and accepting its work**. The difference is fundamental. Buttons will move and tools will change, but the ability to explain clearly what you want and check the result works everywhere: for a website, a draft contract, an Excel formula or an advert. So throughout the lesson there are two routes:

🤖 AI route recommended

AI does it, you approve

You use an AI that can not only write but also act: create files, upload them to GitHub, publish on Cloudflare. Your job is to explain, check and approve.

These are AIs with tools, often called agents (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT with connected tools).

✋ Manual route

AI writes, you copy

You use an ordinary AI chat (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini). It writes the files, and you upload them and click the buttons yourself.

Good if you don't have an agent, or you want to see everything with your own eyes.

The result is the same either way. The only difference is how much of the work you do. ## What you need to start Three things, all free: 1. **An AI chat** — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot. Got one? Great. 2. **A GitHub account** — for the website files and version history. 3. **A Cloudflare account** — for hosting. You can sign in to both with a Google account. And ten minutes of information about your business — more on that in the next step. ## A ready-made prompt: start with this Don't write the prompt yourself. Copy this one, fill in the square brackets and paste it into an AI chat. Everything else is its job. ```text You are my website builder. I have a business; you have the tools and the time. CONTEXT - Company: [name] - What we do: [in one sentence] - Clients: [who it's for] - City or region: [where you work] - What I want from a visitor: [a call / an enquiry / an order] TASK Build a four-page website: home, services, about us, contact. Separate HTML files with embedded CSS, no external libraries. Shared navigation between the pages, a different title and meta description for each page. A light, tidy design that works well on phones. Write the site in [English / Lithuanian / both]. PROCESS — very important 0. TOOLS. First tell me what you can do yourself: create files, use a terminal, control a browser, connect to GitHub or Cloudflare. Say straight away what you can't. 1. ASK. Then ask me the questions you still need answered — one at a time. Don't build anything until you have enough information. 2. PLAN. Show me a short plan and ask whether it works for me. 3. DO. Build only once I agree. GOAL — a working address on the internet, not files on a computer - Don't stop at a zip file or a download. The job is finished when the website is reachable on the internet. - Do everything you can do yourself: create a GitHub repository, add the files, connect Cloudflare Pages, publish. - If you need my sign-in or permission — tell me exactly what to click, wait until I confirm, and CONTINUE the work. - If there's something you can't do at all — give me exact steps, ask me to tell you when I've done them, then continue. RULES - Talk to me in English. Write the site texts in a businesslike way, without empty phrases like "innovative solutions". - INVENT NOTHING about my company: no years in business, no client numbers, no certificates, no testimonials. If a fact is missing — ask me. - Use only the contacts and company details I give you. - Where a photo is needed and I don't have one yet, leave a clearly marked placeholder. AT THE END Tell me what you built, which files there are, and separately — WHAT YOU DID NOT CHECK, what I should review myself. ``` That's it. The rest of the lesson covers what the AI will ask, how to answer, and what you must check before showing the website to clients. ## The most common snag: the AI stops at a zip file We tested this ourselves, so we're warning you in advance. Without a clear instruction, AI often makes the files, packs them into a zip and politely offers: *“when you're ready, I can help you put this on GitHub”*. It sounds helpful, but you still don't have a website on the internet. The reason is simple: models tend to stop at a safe result if nobody has said where the finish line is. That's why the prompt contains the line **“Don't stop at a zip file”**. If it stops anyway, say it straight: ```text Don't stop. The goal is a working address on the internet. Do everything you can yourself. Where you need my sign-in, tell me what to click, wait for my confirmation and keep going until the website is published. ``` And one more tip: **ask the AI what it can actually do.** Some tools only write text; others can create files, control a browser or connect to your accounts. That decides how much work is left for you — which is why the first step in the prompt is “tell me what you can do yourself”. ## What it didn't check — read this part carefully At the end of the prompt we ask the AI to list separately **what it did not check**. That's the most valuable part of the answer. A real example from our test. At the end, the AI wrote roughly this: > I copied the email address exactly as you gave it. Check for a typo — the company > name is spelled one way and the email address another. > I didn't open the website in a real browser or check it on a phone. > The tone of the texts and the colours are my choice, not agreed with you. Three things at once: it found **a real typo** in the client's details, honestly said it **hadn't checked in a browser**, and named where it had made decisions **for you**. Without that sentence in the prompt you'd have got just “everything's ready” — and a wrong email address on your website. ## Why not a single page One long page looks simpler, but it has one drawback that costs clients: **Google and AI search show pages, not websites.** With a separate “Services” page, you can be found by a search for that specific service. With everything on one page, you compete with a single address — and usually lose to whoever has a separate page for exactly that service. Separate pages are also easier to maintain: change a price and you fix one place, instead of hunting for it in a long text. ## Where it really starts: an email account Before the website you'll need accounts in a few places — hosting, the domain, AI tools. They all start with an email address. The simplest route is **signing in with Google** (“Sign in with Google”). That way you don't create new passwords or have to remember them. It's a recommendation, not a rule — any other email works too. But two things are worth deciding straight away: - **That account becomes the key to everything** — the domain, the hosting, the website. So **be sure to switch on MFA** (see the lesson [Passwords and MFA without the pain](/en/lessons/passwords-and-mfa)). Lose that account and you lose the website. - **For a business — a company account, not a personal one.** A classic situation: the website is registered to a former employee's personal Gmail, and nobody has their phone any more. Use `name@yourcompany.lt`. ## Preparation: 10 minutes that save 40 Most people spend the hour looking for the logo file. So before you start, put these in one folder: - **The logo** (if you have one) and 3–5 photos. Don't have your own? Three routes: free stock photo sites ([Unsplash](https://unsplash.com), [Pexels](https://pexels.com)), **generated with AI**, or simply taken on your phone. More on AI photos in the next step. - **Contacts**: phone, email, address, opening hours. - **Company details**: name, company code, VAT code. - **3–5 testimonials** or client names, if you're allowed to publish them. You don't need the domain yet — we'll connect it at the end. ## AI can make the photos too No photos, and you don't want the same ones half of Lithuania uses? Ask an AI (ChatGPT, Gemini or another tool that generates images): > Create a background photo for a website: light, calm, no text, no faces, > landscape, suited to [your business]. Realistic, not a drawing. **Where AI photos work brilliantly:** backgrounds, abstracts, illustrations, icons, mood images. **Where the line is, and it matters:** don't create fake photos of your team, premises or products. “Our team” made of AI-invented people is a lie to the client — and the lie comes out at the first meeting. A simple rule: > An AI photo can **illustrate**, but it can't **testify**. Photograph your work, premises and people on your phone. An imperfect real photo sells better than a perfect fake one — and EU rules on labelling AI content are only getting stricter. ## Content first. Always The most common mistake is starting with the design. But a beautiful empty page sells nothing, while AI turns good content into a design in minutes. Answer five questions, 2–3 sentences each: 1. **What do you do?** In one sentence, without “innovative solutions”. 2. **For whom?** Who is your client — a café in Kaunas or a 50-person factory? 3. **Why you?** Three specific things. Not “quality”, but “we arrive within 4 hours”. 4. **What do you offer?** 3–6 services or products. 5. **What do you want from the visitor?** A call? An enquiry? One action, not five. These five answers are your website. Everything else is decoration. ## The most important trick: tell the AI to ask first Most people type “make a website” and get something mediocre. Not because the AI is bad, but because it's guessing. The fix is simple and works with any task: > **Ask first. Then a plan. Only then do it.** Before the main task, paste these three lines: > Before you start, ask me the questions you still need answered — one at a time, > until you have enough. Then show me a short plan and ask whether it works. > Only start building once I approve. The difference is huge: instead of an invented “innovative company” you get a page about **your** business, because the AI asks about what it doesn't know instead of making it up. ## Project rules: a prompt you write once For more serious work it's worth having a standing prompt — a kind of project constitution you give the AI every time. We work like this ourselves on client websites. The structure: 1. **Who you are.** “You are my website builder.” 2. **What we have.** Where the website is kept, where the domain is, how content is edited. 3. **Principles.** What doesn't change: logo, colours, language, speed. 4. **Process.** Ask → plan → do → check. 5. **What never to do.** Don't invent facts, don't put passwords in the text, don't change what I didn't ask for. 6. **How to report back.** What you changed, where to see it, and **what you didn't check.** Point six is the most valuable. AI happily says “everything works”. Ask it to list separately what was left unchecked, and you get an honest answer — and you know where to look with your own eyes. ## AI makes the first version Now open any AI chat and paste your answers with this task: > Build a four-page website for my company. My answers to the five questions are below. > Make four separate HTML files with embedded CSS, no external libraries, so it works > when you open the file: > `index.html` (home), `services.html`, `about.html`, `contact.html`. > The same top navigation with links between them on every page, and the same footer > with the company details. Write a different `title` and `meta description` for each > page. A light, tidy design that works well on phones. > Write the texts in [English / Lithuanian], in a businesslike way, without empty phrases. > Don't invent anything — use only what I've given you. Before you start, ask questions > if anything is missing. You'll get four files. Put them in one folder (photos in an `img` subfolder) and open `index.html` in your browser — the website already works on your computer, and the links between pages work without the internet. Important: **every page's `title` must be different.** That's what Google shows in the results, and that's why separate pages win searches. To improve the design you can also use [Google Stitch](https://stitch.withgoogle.com) — it generates layouts from text. ## What AI always gets wrong A step nobody skips without paying for it. Read the text and throw out: - **Invented facts.** “Experience since 2009”, “200 happy clients” — if you didn't give it that, the AI made it up. That's both a reputational and a legal risk. - **Empty phrases.** “Innovative solutions”, “individual approach” — everyone writes them, so they mean nothing. - **Fake contacts.** AI happily puts in `info@example.com` and +370 600 00000. - **Leftovers in the wrong language** — e.g. “Learn more” or “Our Services” on a Lithuanian site. The rule: **anything that can be checked must be true.** ## A solid foundation: version control and automatic hosting This is where most people take the quick route and regret it later. You can just drag the files into a hosting service — it'll work. But a month later someone changes a text, someone else deletes a photo, and a week after that the website “somehow doesn't work” and nobody remembers what it was like before. So let's do it right from the start. You need two free things: - **GitHub** — keeps all the files and **the history of every change**; - **Cloudflare Pages** — hosts the website and **publishes it automatically** as soon as anything changes on GitHub. What that gives you in practice: - **Every change has a date, an author and a description.** You can see who changed the price and when. - **You can go back to an earlier version at any time** — with one click, in a few seconds. A broken website stops being a disaster. - **Publishing is automatic.** Change a text — a minute later it's on the website. - **Files never disappear**, even if your computer burns down. And most important for a beginner: **no command line needed.** You'll do everything in the browser. That's exactly how we work on client websites too. ## Setting up the foundation (once) You'll need two free accounts: [GitHub](https://github.com) and [Cloudflare](https://dash.cloudflare.com). You can sign in to both with a Google account. Then — two routes.

🤖 AI route recommended

Say what you want

“Create a private GitHub repository `my-website`, add this website's files to it, then connect it to Cloudflare Pages and publish it. When you've finished, give me the address where the website can be reached and what I should still check myself. If you need my sign-in — tell me what to click, wait, and continue.”

That last line matters. Without it, the AI often stops at the files and only offers to help publish.

The agent will ask for permission to connect to your accounts — you grant it, and you never show it your passwords.

Your job: approve the actions and, at the end, open the address you get — does it really work?

✋ Manual route

Five steps in the browser

  1. GitHub → New repository, call it my-website, choose Private.
  2. Add file → Upload files, drag in the HTML files and the img folder.
  3. Add a description at the bottom (“first version”) → Commit changes.
  4. Cloudflare → Workers & Pages → Create → Pages → Connect to Git.
  5. Choose the repository → Save and Deploy.
A minute later you'll have a working address, e.g. `my-website.pages.dev`. From now on **every change on GitHub automatically appears on the website.** ## How to change a text later

🤖 AI route recommended

Say what to change

“On the contact page, change the phone number to +370 600 12345, update it in the footer too if it's there. Make a commit with a clear description and publish it.”

The AI will find every place — including the one you'd have forgotten.

✋ Manual route

The pencil on GitHub

  1. Open the file, e.g. contact.html.
  2. Click the pencil icon (Edit).
  3. Change the text.
  4. Commit changes with a short description.
A minute later the change is on the website. And if you made a mistake — the next step. ## When something breaks: going back This is the part we did all this for. - **Cloudflare** keeps every published version. **Workers & Pages → your project → Deployments** — next to an older version, click **Rollback**. The website returns to its earlier state in a few seconds. - **GitHub** keeps the history of every file. In **History** you see all the changes and can restore any version. Compare that with the usual situation, where one person looks after the website on their own computer: there, “going back” usually means “doing it all again”. ## Connecting your own domain `your-company.pages.dev` is fine for testing, but clients need your own name. Buy the domain (a .lt costs about 10–15 EUR a year) from any registrar. Then, in the Cloudflare project, choose **Custom domains → Set up a domain** and follow the instructions — they'll show which records to change. Within a few minutes (sometimes hours) your website will be reachable at `yourcompany.lt`. The HTTPS padlock switches on automatically and for free. ## Must-haves before showing it to clients A short list worth going through: - **Contacts visible straight away**, without scrolling. The phone number is a link you can tap on a phone. - **Company details in the footer**: name, company code, address. - **Check it on a phone.** More than half of visitors will be on a phone. - **A privacy policy**, if you have a contact form or analytics — you're collecting personal data, so in Lithuania it's mandatory. - **Photo sizes.** A 5 MB photo takes forever to load on a phone; shrink it to ~200 KB (e.g. [squoosh.app](https://squoosh.app)). ## So you're found — by people and by AI Five minutes that pay off most: - **A different title (`title`) for each page** — “Service in city | Company” on the services page, “Contact | Company” on the contact page. That's the biggest benefit of separate pages: four pages can be found by four different searches. - **A description (`description`)**: one sentence shown in Google's results. - **A Google Business profile** — for a small business often more important than the website itself. - **Clear text.** AI search (ChatGPT, Perplexity) reads the same text as Google. The more specifically you say what you do and where, the more often you'll be suggested. ## If you get stuck The most common snags and how to solve them: - **The AI gave me code and I don't know what to do with it** — ask: “give it to me as one HTML file I can download”. - **The website looks bad on a phone** — tell the AI: “make it work well on phones, and make sure the text isn't too small”. - **The domain doesn't work** — changes sometimes take up to a few hours. Wait. - **I want to change a text** — open the file on GitHub, click the pencil, fix it and commit. A minute later the change is on the website. No time, or want us to do it? **pagalba@itbroliai.lt** ## Check yourself Six questions on what you've just done. At the end you'll get a certificate with your score.