Get started

The whole thing, step by step

This guide is for you if you have never had a website. You do not need to code, and you do not need to know how the web fits together. You need to be able to click through an order, copy a piece of text, and say so when something looks wrong.

It takes about half an hour in all, spread over two days. A new domain needs up to a day before it works everywhere, so you order today, build your first exercise while you wait, and put it online tomorrow.

Five words you will meet

Domain

The address, such as chemlab.eu. You rent it a year at a time.

Web host

The computer on the internet that shows your pages to the students. You rent space on it.

DirectAdmin

The web host’s control panel. You go in a few times, and each time a picture here shows what to click.

SSL

What gives you the padlock in the address bar. Without it, the browser warns the students.

SSH key

A digital key that Claude Code makes for you. With it, Claude can put the files on the web host without you giving it your password.

The guide

The route here uses Site.eu, a European web host with servers in the EU, where the sites on Invisible Ink also live. It is cheap, the smallest plan has room for 25 domains, and Claude Code can upload files without extra tools. The buttons are named as they appear on screen, and the pencil rings on the pictures show where to click.

The screenshots are from Site.eu and DirectAdmin on 2 October 2026. Username, domains and numbers have been replaced with examples.

1. Day 1 · 10 minutes

   Order a domain and a web host

   1. Go to site.eu, type the name you want in the search field, and press Search! Pick a name without accents or special letters, so it is easy to type.
   2. If it says Register next to the name, it is free. Hover over the small i beside the name: it shows what the domain costs to renew. Then press Register.

      

   3. Choose the Basic plan with Select this plan. It does everything an exercise needs.

      

   4. Press Account details at the top right. If you have no account, choose Haven’t registered yet?

      

   5. Enter your email address and a password, tick the terms, and press Create my account. Keep the password somewhere safe. It is the only one you will use yourself. Then fill in the billing details and pay.

      

   If your institution pays, use your work email and the institution’s address. Then the account belongs to the institution and not to you, on the day someone else has to take over.

2. Day 1 · 5 minutes

   Switch on the web host

   1. Log in to Site.eu, press Dashboard, and click your plan in the menu on the left.

      

   2. You now see the plan’s page. Do what the numbers on the picture show:

      

      1. 1 Open the Web hosting tab.
      2. 2 Switch Web hosting on. If it asks about control panel and server, leave DirectAdmin and Automatically choose the best web hosting server for me as they are.
      3. 3 Switch SSH on. That is what Claude Code will use.
      4. 4 Write down the username. You do not need to keep the password below it.
      5. 5 Right-click Go to control panel and choose Copy link. Paste the link somewhere you can find it again in step 5.
      6. 6 Log in automatically opens DirectAdmin. You will use that button in step 5 and later.

3. Day 1 · 5 minutes

   Get Claude

   1. Buy Claude Pro at claude.ai. Claude Code is included.
   2. Download the desktop app at claude.ai/download, install it, and log in.
   3. Make an empty folder on your computer, such as My exercises.
   4. Open the Code tab in the app, press Select folder, and choose the folder.
   5. Choose Manual next to the send button. Claude then asks before it changes anything, and you can see what it does.

4. Day 1 · 5 minutes, then you wait for a proposal

   Send the starter prompt

   Copy the prompt, paste it into Claude, and change the three phrases in square brackets to fit your own exercise. The prompt sets up the site, writes down the rules all your exercises must follow, and asks for a proposal before anything is built. The paper test can help you find an exercise worth making.

   The starter prompt

   I teach, and I want to build small interactive exercises for my students as a website. I can't code, so explain everything in plain language, and ask before you do anything that can't be undone.

   Set up the project in this folder:

   1. A front page that lists the exercises, and one folder per exercise.
   2. Only plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript files. Nothing that has to be built or installed, and nothing fetched from other sites: no fonts, scripts or analytics from elsewhere.
   3. Nothing leaves the students' browser. No login, no names, no collecting of answers.
   4. It must work on phones and computers, be usable with a keyboard and a screen reader, and an answer must never be shown by colour alone.
   5. A README.md for people and a CLAUDE.md for you with these rules. Whenever I correct you on something that applies to every exercise, add it to CLAUDE.md.
   6. Use git, and say in every change why it was made.
   7. The site will run on a web host with Apache or LiteSpeed. Add an .htaccess with security rules that enforce points 2 and 3, and that send every visitor on to https.
   8. Show me the site on my own computer before anything goes online.

   The first exercise is for [subject and level, e.g. second-year nursing]. The students should discover that [what they should discover]. It usually goes wrong because [what you have seen them do].

   Give me your proposal for the exercise before you build it.

   The answer is a proposal. Read it, and reply as you would to a colleague: what is good, what is wrong, and what it must not do. When you say yes, it builds. The prototype of the exercise on Workflow was ready 24 minutes after the first prompt, and it was a big one.

5. Day 1 · 5 minutes

   Give Claude a key to the web host

   Send this prompt with the username, the link and your domain from step 2:

   The key prompt

   My web host is Site.eu with DirectAdmin. The username is [username], the link to the control panel is [the link from Go to control panel], and the domain is [mydomain.eu]. SSH is switched on, and the server is the one in the link.

   Make an SSH key that is only used for this web host, and show me the public part so I can paste it into DirectAdmin. Never ask for my password.

   Then make a small deploy script that puts the site in the web root for my domain, shows me what will change before it happens, and checks afterwards that the site responds. It must work on my computer without me installing anything. Write in README.md how to use it.

   1. Claude shows a long line that starts with ssh-ed25519. Copy the whole line.
   2. Open DirectAdmin with Log in automatically from step 2. Click Search for pages, type SSH, and choose SSH Keys.

      

   3. Press PASTE KEY.

      

   4. Paste the line into the Line field and press CREATE. Afterwards the key is in the list, as in the picture above.

      

   5. Tell Claude the key is in. The first time, it may ask whether it may trust the web host. Say yes.

6. Day 2 · 1 minute

   Check the padlock

   The padlock arrives by itself. DirectAdmin orders a certificate as soon as the domain works on the internet, and renews it automatically. All you have to do is check that it has happened.

   1. Open DirectAdmin, search for SSL, and choose SSL/TLS Certificates.
   2. If there is a green box saying All DNS names have valid TLS certificates, you are ready.

      

   If it says something else, the domain is not quite ready. Wait a few hours and look again. If it is still not there after a day, write to support@site.eu.

7. Day 2 · 2 minutes

   Put it online

   You

   Put the site online.

   Claude shows what will be uploaded and asks before it does it. Afterwards you open https://mydomain.eu, and there is your exercise, with a padlock. The next time you have changed something, it is the same sentence.

More sites on the same domain

If you want one site per subject or course, you can make addresses such as chemistry.mydomain.eu and physics.mydomain.eu. They are called subdomains and cost nothing extra. Site.eu sends them to your web host automatically.

1. In DirectAdmin: Account Manager → Subdomain Management. Check that your domain is shown at the top right, and press ADD SUBDOMAIN.

   

2. Type only the first part of the address, such as chemistry. Leave Document Root on Default, so the site gets its own folder. Press ADD SUBDOMAIN.

   

3. The padlock arrives by itself: the certificate for your domain is extended with the new address within a few hours.
4. Make a new empty folder for the site, choose it in Claude, and send the starter prompt again, with one line at the end: The site will live at chemistry.mydomain.eu on the same web host. Use the key from my other site.

Do not choose Legacy. It puts the new site in a folder inside the old one, and then one site can end up deleting the other when it is uploaded.

When something goes wrong

• Copy the error to Claude. The whole message, including the parts you do not understand. Say what you did just before.
• The page still says Site.eu is building something. The site has not been uploaded yet, or it went into the wrong folder. Ask Claude to check where it is.
• The browser warns about an insecure connection. The padlock is not there yet. See step 6.
• Claude says Permission denied. The key has not been pasted in, or SSH was not switched on in step 2.
• The exercise looks right but is wrong. No machine catches that. Try it yourself, and then with a few of the people it is for. See Quality.

Optional: GitHub

So far, everything lives on your own computer and on the web host. GitHub is a place on the internet where the whole history can live too: every change and the reason for it. It is free, and it is useful if

• you want a copy that does not disappear with your computer,
• a colleague should be able to follow along, make corrections or take over,
• you work on the site from more than one computer.

Create an account at github.com, then send this prompt:

Choose a private repo. GitHub can also serve the site itself, but on the free plan that requires everything to be public, and a data processing agreement is unclear for a personal account. See the comparison under Tech.

Optional: your institution's own server

If your institution has a web host or a web server, it may be the best place: the account belongs to the institution, and the agreements may already be in place. Ask the IT department for three things: an address for the site, access with an SSH key, and the name of the folder the files should go in. Give the answers to Claude instead of the Site.eu details in step 5.

Before the students get the link

Even a site that stores nothing leaves a trace: the web host records every visitor's IP address in its log. That usually makes the web host a data processor for you or your institution. Site.eu provides its data processing agreement on request: write to support@site.eu and ask for it before the exercise is used with a class. What else has to be in place is on Privacy.