This topic has been beaten to death of late, but it is my first "how to" post, and first time to try and leverage markdown syntax in a post.
Recently I was combing through my old repositories and came across one I used to make a very basic HTML webpage hosted on Gitlab noted below.
Run a webpage from a folder on Gitlab for free
You will need a Gitlab account to do this, so head there and create a free account first
Some history from the 90s
I remember making webpages as far back as 1992 when I first started my EE degree. We got some free webspace through the university labs and one of the first assignments was to make a personal webpage that told the class something about ourselves. I don't have it any more, but it featured tiled images of the movie delicatessen they might be giants lyrics, links to myspace, memepool, and probably alta vista back then.
Jumping hosting platforms
I definitely took it to heart, and over the years would have a dinky blog online, first through the university, then later switching to blogger, and eventually a wordpress setup on my home machine using a dyndns name. At some point I took the plunge and got my own domain name and shared hosting and played the game of addons, monitoring spam, and fighting horrible theme details to make a nice simple site where I bitched and moaned about the world.
Enter Github
5 years ago I got interested in python and scripting in general, and decided to start using Github for maintaining my code. Once I learned there was a way to host my entire webpage on Github for free with a custom domain I was hooked.
No more wordpress!
No more complicated themes!
No more paying a hosting provider!
No more spam issues!
I setup a simple blog that worked at the time and threw it up and started playing with jekyll themes. Initially this was frustrating. The themes were a bit complicated for me, and I was learning how to use a static site generator as well as git in general. Add to this the concept of ruby gems and gemfiles for adding features to sites and I was second guessing my jump to Github for my webpage.
Suffice to say I never quite got the hang of the workflow with Jekyll. Once Microsoft bought Github I decided to move all of my repos to Gitlab which supported an alternate static site generator named Hugo.
Hugo powers the site you are on today!