Tip: Never believe anything called ‘Do blah in x time’ it’s always a lie. I once bought a book called Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours and I still can’t do it 20 years later. There are a few small porkies here too.

Lie number 1.

Before you can create a website you need an account and to get an account you need to get to Trust Level 1 on this forum, by reading a few posts for the total of one hour.

So I should have called this post: “Your first SAFE website – start to finish in just 1 hour and 20 minutes” but who’s going to click on that?

An hour later

OK, you’ve got yourself to Trust Level 1. You can tell because your name is now a dark grey colour and if you double click on the letter in the circle or your avatar you’ll see Trust level: Basic.

Now I can show you how to make a beautiful* pet website in just 20 minutes, start to finish. For real

0 mins: Get an invite code

Now you’re Level 1 you can go to invite.maidsafe.net and get yourself an Invite Code. Click the Icon then select Alpha 2.

Set your IP address and you’ll see your Invite Code below. Leave that page open so you can copy the invite code in a couple of minutes

3 mins: Get the SAFE browser

Go to https://github.com/maidsafe/safe_browser/releases and download the appropriate version of the SAFE Browser for your operating system. I’m using Windows 10. Don’t choose the one that ends in –dev.zip. Note: the pics show Peruse which was the old name for SAFE Browser. Everything else is the same.

Go to the downloaded Zip file and extract it using Windows Explorer, unzip, WinRAR, 7-Zip or similar.



Then inside the extracted folder find SAFE browser.exe (note: the pic shows Peruse, the previous name of the browser) and double-click on it.

Click ‘allow access’ if Windows asks and SAFE Browser should open at safe-auth://home/#/login.

Click on Create Account then Continue …

5 mins: Then paste in your Invite Code from before and click Continue

You now need to create two passwords: an Account Secret and a Password. They can be the same thing if you like as this is just a test network. They need to be more than 10 characters long. Click Next you should be logged in! Accept the request for authorisation and you’re ready to go.



7 mins: Get the Web Hosting Manager

Now we need to get the Web Hosting Manager so we can create an ID and upload our website. Download the correct version (not the dev version) from here https://github.com/maidsafe/safe-web-hosting-manager-electron/releases , extract it in the same way as you did with SAFE Browser, navigate to the web-hosting-manager… folder and double click on web-hosting-manager.exe. Click through any warnings (“Run anyway”) and Web Hosting Manager will start. But first, you’ll need to authorise it in Peruse browser. So go to SAFE Browser and click Accept. Again you may need to tell Windows to allow the application.

All that done, you should now see a screen like this.

Now create an ID. I’ve already used jpl so rather imaginatively I’m going for jpl1. Click on Create Public ID. That done, it’s time to create our website. Wohooo!

10 mins: Create your website on your PC

Make a new empty folder somewhere on your PC and call it ‘safesite’ (or whatever you like).

Open new page in Notepad, copy and paste the following code and save it in the safesite folder as index.html.

<html> <head> <title>My Cat</title> </head> <body> <h1>Here is my cat</h1> <h2>The most beautiful cat on the SAFE Network</h2> <img src="cat.jpg" alt="cat"> </body> </html>

Now add save a pic of your pet. I’m using one of my cat, saved as cat.jpg.

Feel free to edit index.html, replacing the word ‘cat’ with dog, ant, badger, hamster, buffalo, giraffe or whatever pet you prefer and finding an image to match - making sure your image name matches the one in your code. Store the image in the safesite folder.

Lie number 2

I don’t have a cat. I’ve used one I found on the web. https://www.findcatnames.com/49-genius-tabby-cat-names-youll-love/

Before uploading the site, just open index.html in a browser to check the picture is showing up OK.

15 mins: Upload it to SAFE Network

OK now it’s time to upload it to the SAFE Network.

Go to the web hosting manager, click Create Website.

Choose Start from Scratch.

Choose a name for your website (cat, dog, ant, etc) then Next

Click the plus sign then choose Upload Folder.

Navigate to the folder containing your index.html and image (safesite) and select it.

You should see the files uploading.

Scroll down and hit Publish.

Go to SAFE Browser and type in [your website].[your ID] e.g. cat.jpl1

20 mins: Taadaa!

Lie number 3 *

I promised you a beautiful website, but this is something so embarrassing and clunky that a five-year old would laugh at it. But hopefully it demonstrates the truth of just how easy it is to create your own site on SAFE. If you have web design skills now’s the time to put them to use and make a better one.