We Love Dogs

This web page is live, mobile-responsive, enterprise-secure, and full https. It costs $8 a year to run. No subscriptions, no platform traps, and 100% owner control. Here is how you can build one just like it.

First, a crash course: The 5 Building Blocks of a Website

• The Domain Name (The Sign): Your web address (like welovedogs.cc). It simply tells browsers where to look.
• The DNS (The addressing on the sign): A set of mappings from your domain name to IP addresses of places like the land.
• The Hosting Platform (The Land): Server space to store files. We use Cloudflare Pages because it provides free space on a massive global network.
• The Web Page (The House): This index.html file. It contains the raw code telling the browser how to display your layout.
• Referenced Contents (The Furniture): Separate files, like your logo.png image, that style the page.

Second, your final exam: Build your own site and spend $8

Step 1 Secure Your Website Domain

Do not buy from retail hosts that hike prices next year. Buy your domain at wholesale cost directly from Cloudflare Registrar or an affordable registrar like Porkbun.

1. Goto CloudFlare.com and sign up for a free account.
2. Once logged in, click Domains then Registrations then Buy domain.
• Search for a clean, short, memorable domain name (using a cheap extension like .cc). WeLoveDogs.cc seems to meet all of the above for this tutorial site.
• Purchase the domain (usually around $8 - $10 total for the entire year - but also ensure the renewal cost is not expensive).
• When prompted for the CloudFlare plan select the FREE one.

This tutorial is limited to if you register the domain with CloudFlare. If you register with a different registrar, you'll still need to use CloudFlare as your DNS provider. Search for how to use CloudFlare as my DNS provider. Do those steps before Step 4 below.

Step 2 Let Gemini Generate Your Logo and Code

You do not need graphic designers or software developers. Gemini can create both your corporate branding and your website layout for you in seconds. Follow these two simple text prompts:

Part A: Generate Your Logo
Paste this prompt into Gemini to create your brand icon:

Note: Download the image from Gemini, crop it into a perfect square, and name the file exactly logo.png (all lowercase).

Part B: Generate Your Web Code
Next, paste this prompt into Gemini to create your website file:

Assemble Your Folder:

1. Create a folder on your computer desktop named my-website.
2. Drop your logo.png image file directly into that folder.
3. Open a basic text editor (Notepad on Windows, TextEdit on Mac set to plain text mode), paste the website code from Gemini inside, and save it in that same folder as index.html.

Note: On a free CloudFlare Page deployment, you can have up to 20,000 files, that being a combination of html, css, image, and function files. Yeah, you won't run out of space.

Step 3 Drop Your Folder into the Cloud

1. Log into your free Cloudflare account dashboard.
2. Click Build then Compute then Workers & Pages in the left sidebar menu.
3. Click Create application, choose Upload your static file.
4. then drag and drop your entire my-website folder directly into the browser window.
5. make note of application (webpage) URL, update it if you like.
6. Click Deploy site. Your page is now live on that application URL

Step 4 Now Point Your Address to Your House

1. Still on the Worker's & Pages page, up at the top click the Domains tab.
2. Click Add Domain, select your domain from the list, and accept the defaults for routing your domain, click Add domain.
3. This creates a DNS entry to associate your domain name with that application URL (The application URL's DNS entries point to an IP address).

Step 5 Create a Professional Business Email

You don't need to pay for a premium email inbox. You can route professional business emails straight to your personal Gmail or Outlook account for free using the same Cloudflare dashboard:

1. In the main Cloudflare sidebar, click Domains then click Overview and select your domain (welovedogs.cc).
2. Click Email in the left-hand menu, and click Enable Email Routing. (Cloudflare will automatically configure your DNS records behind the scenes).
3. Navigate to the Routing Rules tab and click Create Rule.
4. Set the custom address to hello (creating hello@welovedogs.cc).
5. Set the destination address to your personal email address and follow the instant confirmation link sent to your inbox.

In the future you can point your DNS MX records to a full email service allowing you to both send and receive as well as having multiple email accounts on your domain, but for now, this will give you receive capabilities for free.

Step 6 Maintenance

Updating the site is easy. Edit the index.html file on your computer, engage Gemini as required, you can always start a chat with Gemini and explain what changes you want and paste your existing index.html file in your chat.. save your index.html and any new images.. then deploy:

1. Click Build then Compute then Workers & Pages in the left sidebar menu.
2. In list of Pages (applications), click on your existing deployment.
3. On the top right, click New Deployment then drag your folder or all files into the box and click Deploy.
4. Boom, they are live.