Chapter 5 · Take Your Site Live: Onto the Free Shelf

Where you are, and what this chapter solves

Your 10 pages sit on your computer — but players can’t reach them. It’s like a book fresh from the print shop that hasn’t been placed on any store shelf.

This chapter puts the book on the shelf: first onto GitHub, then onto Cloudflare’s free shelf (no money down, effectively unlimited bandwidth), and you come away with a URL the whole world can open.

What you’ll have when this chapter is done

A URL anyone in the world can open (a free domain first; swap in your own later)
The site’s “settings registry” straightened out, so turning on ads later won’t trip you up

A few words to know

Deploy: putting your site files onto a server everyone can reach. What we use here is Cloudflare Pages — free.
Domain: the site’s street address, like yourgame-wiki.com. Use the free address first; switch to a real one before you earn.

Step 1: Push the files to GitHub

What to do: for Cloudflare to reach the site files on your computer, they must first live on GitHub. How to do it: in the terminal (inside the AnvilWiki folder), enter in order:

git add .
git commit -m "My game wiki, first version"
git push

You’ll see: the first push pops up a GitHub login window; log into your account, then the terminal shows upload progress. Confirm it worked: refresh your GitHub repo page and you can see folders like docs and src.

Step 2: Connect the Cloudflare shelf

What to do: tell Cloudflare “my repo is here; every time I update, reshelve automatically”. How to do it:

Register / log in at dash.cloudflare.com (free).
On the left, pick Workers & Pages → Create → Pages → Connect to Git.
Authorize GitHub, select your AnvilWiki repo, click Begin setup.
Copy the build settings as-is:

What it asks	What you enter
Project name	Anything, e.g. your game’s name (it becomes part of the URL)
Production branch	`main`
Framework preset	Astro (usually auto-detected)
Build command	`pnpm build`
Build output directory	`dist`

In the Environment variables area, add one variable: name NODE_VERSION, value 22.
Click Save and Deploy.

You’ll see: the build progress runs 2 to 3 minutes and ends with a https://project-name.pages.dev URL. Confirm it worked: open that URL and see your game site — from this moment on, the whole world can reach it.

Step 3: Handle the big beginner trap (which settings win)

What to do: delete a file called wrangler.toml. The reason in one sentence: the site’s settings have two registries — this file in the repo, and the settings pages in the Cloudflare web UI. While the file exists, the web settings are all ignored. Beginners simply delete the file and use only the web UI from then on — clean, no traps. How to do it: in the terminal, type:

git rm wrangler.toml
git commit -m "remove wrangler.toml"
git push

You’ll see: wrangler.toml disappears from the GitHub repo’s file list, and Cloudflare redeploys automatically once. Confirm it worked: Cloudflare → your project → Settings → Variables and Secrets shows NODE_VERSION = 22 (added in Step 2; it only truly takes effect now that the file is gone). From now on, every variable for ads or analytics gets added on this page.

Advanced note: keeping the file and recording settings in the repo works too, but then NODE_VERSION = "22" and every other variable must live in the file’s [vars] section, and the web settings are still ignored — details in the developer manual’s feature-toggles chapter. Beginners, don’t touch it; just delete the file.

Step 4: Buy your own domain (skippable for now, needed before earning)

What to do: swap project-name.pages.dev for your own street address. AdSense review basically requires a domain you own, so you must buy one before earning (a few dozen dollars a year). How to do it: search for a .com / .wiki domain at Cloudflare Registrar (sells at cost, no markup) or a registrar like Porkbun and buy it; then Cloudflare Pages → your project → Custom domains → Set up, and follow the prompts to point the domain over (with DNS on Cloudflare, it’s next-next-next the whole way). You’ll see: within minutes (a few hours at most), your domain opens your site. Confirm it worked: once your domain opens the site, change both the Domain in the Chapter 3 config and Cloudflare’s SITE_URL variable to this domain (must start with https://, no exceptions), and redeploy.

If you get stuck

“The Cloudflare build failed”: open that deployment and read the last log line. Nine times out of ten it’s one of two things: an environment variable misconfigured (back to Step 2, check NODE_VERSION), or SITE_URL missing the https://.
“I changed settings in the Cloudflare web UI but nothing happened”: recall Step 3 — did you delete wrangler.toml? While it exists, the web settings are ignored.
“The domain opens but the styling is broken / images are gone”: nine times out of ten SITE_URL still isn’t the new domain. Change it to https://your-domain and redeploy.
“I closed the login window the first git push showed”: push again — it pops up again.

✅ Acceptance criteria (all must hold)

Your URL opens on phone data (no WiFi needed), pages rendering normally
wrangler.toml is deleted, and every setting from now on goes into the Cloudflare web UI
☐ If you have a domain: SITE_URL has been changed to https://your-domain

Next step

The site is live, but Google doesn’t know you exist — the next chapter gets it to start indexing you, which is where traffic begins. Go to Chapter 6 · Get Google to Know You