What’s the best free way to host my own research website?

You can purchase a custom domain from a registrar and connect it to free hosting. Just check the renewal price rather than focusing only on an introductory promotion. Also, avoid running a home server or writing your own internet-facing server software unless you’re prepared to handle security, updates, backups, and abuse risks. For a first project, managed hosting is much safer and simpler.

If your site will mostly contain text, images, PDFs, and other static files, a free static hosting service is probably all you need. Services such as GitHub Pages, Neocities, or Nekoweb can host that kind of site without requiring you to manage a server. The free address will usually be a subdomain, while a custom domain such as yourname.com normally requires an annual registration fee.

Before choosing hosting, sketch out the pages and features you actually need. A basic research site might only need an about page, a list of projects, individual paper pages, downloadable files, and contact information. You probably don’t need a database, user accounts, or custom backend code unless you plan to add interactive tools or private content.

First decide whether your goal is to learn web development or simply get your research online. If you mainly need a professional-looking publication site, a template-based tool or a content management system will be much faster than building everything from scratch. If learning is the priority, start with basic HTML and CSS, then publish a simple static site through a service such as GitHub Pages or Netlify.