Build Your Own Website

You don't need a developer. You need a weekend, a few files, and about forty bucks. This is the whole workflow behind the site you're reading this on: every piece, in order, and what each one costs.

The build, step by step

• 1. Get a GitHub account (free). This is where your site actually lives: every page and image in one place you control. It also keeps every past version, so nothing is ever truly lost. Think of it as the filing cabinet the whole thing runs out of.
• 2. Make one folder on your desktop. This is home base. Everything goes in it: your assets and the site's own files, so there's one place that holds the whole project. It's also where Claude Code does its work, so you're never hunting for anything.
• 3. Get your assets together, in that folder. Photos, the words you want to say, your music or links to it (SoundCloud, YouTube, wherever it already lives); the more you have ready, the faster the build goes.
• 4. Buy your domain through Netlify (~$20/yr). Netlify hosts the site for free and sells you the name in the same dashboard: no juggling three companies. I bought prodmason.co this way and it was the smoothest part of the whole thing.
• 5. Set up Claude Code ($20/mo). This is the part that replaces the web designer. It runs on your laptop and works out of that desktop folder; you tell it what you want in plain English and it writes the code. No coding from you.
• 6. Connect the three so they talk to each other. Now put it on autopilot. GitHub stores your files, Netlify publishes them to your domain, Claude Code does the editing. In Netlify, connect your GitHub account and pick your site's repo; Netlify now republishes the live site automatically on every change. Point Claude Code at that same repo (it can walk you through this). The loop: you tell Claude Code what you want, it pushes the change to GitHub, Netlify ships it live in about a minute. You never touch a server.
• 7. Set up Stripe to get paid. Free to open an account. Connect it and you can take donations and sell products right on the site: beats, kits, whatever you've got. Stripe takes a small cut per sale (~2.9% + 30¢); nothing until you actually sell something.

What it costs, plainly

About $40 to be live. Roughly $20 for the domain (a year) and $20 for your first month of Claude Code. GitHub is free. Netlify hosting is free. Stripe is free to set up. That's it: about forty bucks to put your name on the internet. After that it's $20/month for as long as you want to keep building, and the domain renews once a year. No agency retainer, no $5,000 invoice.

The part you can't skip

A website is just a storefront. What goes in it is the actual business: the services you offer, and the terms you offer them on; it's the one part no tool can do for you. Before you write a line of copy, get specific about what you do. Then go study how other people doing the same thing present it: what they charge, what their contracts say, what they promise and what they protect. Borrow what's fair, and where you can, find a more honest way to do it than they did. I spent real time on this part: the readable contract, the splits, who keeps their copyright; it's where the trust lives. Don't cut corners on this. A clean site wrapped around a half-thought-out offer is a wasted weekend. This is the most important thing you'll do, and there's no point building the site without it.

Take the docs

Everything I worked out building this, free to download and reuse. Drop them in your project folder and point your own Claude Code at them: it'll build with the same workflow, the same philosophy, the same principles.

• How This Site Works: the plain-language map of GitHub, Netlify, and Claude Code, and the describe → edit → push → live loop, and a simple, safe workflow your Claude Code can follow. Written so an AI can pick it up cold.
• Philosophy: the worldview the brand runs on, built on Free Game, ownership, and design for the kid you were.
• Design Principles: the tactics that follow from it.
• How I Deal: the deal doctrine and the ethics behind the terms; I won't profit from your lack of leverage.

Credit where it's due: the philosophy and design principles are drawn from Virgil Abloh: his "Free Game" mentorship platform, his Harvard "cheat codes," and Figures of Speech, mapped onto how prod.mason already works. This whole page is that idea, paid forward.

How to use them: download all four, put them in the same desktop folder as your site, and tell your Claude Code to read them before you start. They hand it the how (the workflow) and the why (the philosophy, the principles, the ethics) in one shot; so it isn't just building a site, it's building yours, the right way.