Walkthrough · Project build
Ship your first web project
Deploy
Put it online today, while there is nothing to break. Pick one host and follow its steps.
Going live early turns every change after this into a small, safe step, instead of one big scary leap at the finish. You also get a real link to send people the moment it is worth showing off. All three hosts below have a free plan that covers a project like this, and all three redeploy by themselves whenever you push to GitHub. Not sure? Pick Vercel.
Pick a host
Vercel is made by the team behind Next.js, so there is nothing to set up. 1. Go to vercel.com/signup and choose Continue with GitHub. When asked, pick the free Hobby plan, which is for personal projects. 2. Open vercel.com/new. If my-project is not listed, click Adjust GitHub App Permissions and give Vercel access to it. 3. Click Import next to my-project. 4. Leave every setting as it is and click Deploy. 5. Wait a minute or two for the Congratulations screen, then open your site. Its address ends in .vercel.app.
1. Go to app.netlify.com/signup and sign up with GitHub. 2. Choose Add new project, then Import an existing project. 3. Choose GitHub and allow Netlify to see your repository. 4. Pick my-project. Netlify spots that it is a Next.js app and fills in the settings for you. 5. Click Deploy (some screens say Publish) and wait a few minutes. Your site gets an address ending in .netlify.app.
Cloudflare runs Next.js through an adapter, so there is one extra step: accepting a change it makes to your project. 1. Sign up at dash.cloudflare.com. The free plan is enough. 2. Open Workers & Pages, create an application, choose to import a repository, and connect GitHub. 3. Pick my-project and follow the prompts. Cloudflare detects Next.js and opens a pull request on GitHub with the settings it needs. 4. On GitHub, open the Pull requests tab of your repository, open Cloudflare's pull request and click Merge pull request. 5. Cloudflare builds your site again and gives you an address ending in .workers.dev. 6. Back in your terminal, run git pull so your computer has Cloudflare's changes too.
Stuck? Pick a prompt and ask your AI tool
My deploy failed. This is my first time deploying anything. My host: [Vercel, Netlify or Cloudflare] Here is the build log: [paste the red part of the log] Tell me: 1. What actually broke, in one or two plain sentences 2. Which file to change, and what to change it to 3. How to check the fix works on my computer before I push again
Open it in your AI tool. Clicking copies the prompt, and ChatGPT and Grok open with it already filled in.
- Claude(opens in a new tab)
- ChatGPT(opens in a new tab)
- Qwen(opens in a new tab)
- DeepSeek(opens in a new tab)
- Kimi(opens in a new tab)
- Grok(opens in a new tab)
More tools
App builders, in your browser:
Code editors on your computer. Open app only works once it is installed, so use Get it first if you do not have it.
- CursorOpen appGet it(opens in a new tab)
- VS CodeOpen appGet it(opens in a new tab)
- Antigravity IDEOpen appGet it(opens in a new tab)
- Antigravity 2.0Open appGet it(opens in a new tab)
Want the full list? Browse all app builders and coding editors (IDEs).
- Deployed and opened my live link
- Pushed a second change and watched it go live by itself
- Sign in to tick these off and pick up where you left them.
Tools used in this build
Everything this walkthrough reaches for, with the directory entry for each.