You built a website with AI. Here is how to put it online properly.

Lovable, Bolt, ChatGPT and Claude can build a working site in an afternoon. Getting it onto your own domain, secure, backed up and findable on Google is the part they skip.

"Vibe coding" went from a joke to a job description remarkably fast. You describe the website you want to Lovable, Bolt, v0, ChatGPT or Claude, it writes the code, and an hour later you have something that looks and works like a real site. For a small business, a portfolio or a side project, that is genuinely remarkable.

Then comes the less exciting question: now what? The preview link on the builder's own domain is not where you want customers to find you. You want yourbusiness.com, a padlock in the address bar, a contact form that actually delivers, backups, and a site Google can read. This guide covers the steps between "it works on my screen" and "it is live and I can rely on it".

Step 1: Work out what kind of site you actually have

This decides everything else, and the AI tool will happily tell you if you ask it. Paste this into the builder's chat: "Is this project a static site, or does it need a server or a database to run?" You will get one of three answers.

Lovable's own self-hosting guide is a good example of why this matters: its older projects are React and Vite, which build to static files any host can serve, while projects created since May 2026 use TanStack Start, which runs server code. Same tool, two different hosting needs.

Step 2: Get your code out of the builder

Most builders let you sync the project to GitHub or download it as a zip. Do this even if you plan to keep using the builder: a copy you control is your backup if the tool changes its pricing, its plans or its terms. Lovable, for example, offers GitHub sync on every plan and the zip download on paid plans.

For a React or Vite project, the files you upload are not the project itself but its build. Running the build command produces a folder (usually dist) containing plain HTML, CSS, JavaScript and images. If you have never run a command in a terminal, ask the AI to walk you through it step by step, or ask it to produce the build for you.

npm install
npm run build
# upload the contents of the dist folder, not the folder itself

Step 3: Register the domain you want

Your domain is the one part of your website you should never let anyone else own. Register it in your own name, with an email address you will still have in five years, and turn on auto-renew. You can search and register a domain here, and our guide on keeping control of your domain explains the mistakes that cost people theirs.

Step 4: Put it on proper hosting

For a static build, the steps on any cPanel hosting account are the same:

1. 1Open File Manager in your control panel and go to public_html (the folder your domain points at).
2. 2Upload the contents of your dist folder, so index.html sits directly inside public_html.
3. 3Visit your domain. If the home page loads but other pages show a 404 when you refresh them, add the rule below.
4. 4Turn on the free SSL certificate and force HTTPS, so every visit gets the padlock. Our free SSL guide shows how.

AI builders usually create a single-page app, where one index.html handles every address. The browser knows how to move between pages, but when someone opens /about directly, the server goes looking for an about file that does not exist. This .htaccess file, placed in public_html, sends those requests back to index.html:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase /
  RewriteRule ^index\.html$ - [L]
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteRule . /index.html [L]
</IfModule>

If your project runs server code, choose a plan that runs it. Our Cloud hosting plans support Node.js applications from the same control panel, and a VPS gives you full server access when an app outgrows that.

Step 5: Fix what the AI quietly left out

AI builders are optimised to show you something impressive quickly. The things that only matter after launch are the things they most often skip. Go through this list before you share the link:

Secrets in the wrong place

Anything in a static site's JavaScript can be read by every visitor. If the AI put an API key for OpenAI, Stripe, an email service or a database admin account into the front-end code, assume it is public. Ask the builder: "Are there any secret keys in the code that runs in the browser?" Keys that must stay private belong in server code or environment variables, never in the build you upload.

Forms that go nowhere

A contact form that looks finished often has no working destination. Submit it yourself from the live site and confirm the message arrives. Our contact form guide covers the reliable ways to wire one up.

Pages Google cannot read

A single-page app can arrive at the browser as an almost empty page that JavaScript fills in. Google can usually render that, but many other crawlers, including several AI search crawlers, read only the raw HTML. Ask the AI to give every page its own title and meta description, add a sitemap, and if the site matters for search, ask whether it can pre-render pages to static HTML. Our piece on getting recommended by ChatGPT and Google's AI answers explains why this matters more every month.

Speed, privacy and the boring legal bits

• Compress the images. AI tools love full-size stock photos, and they are usually the main reason a page is slow.
• Add a privacy policy, and a cookie banner if you use analytics or ads. See our GDPR checklist.
• Run the live site through PageSpeed Insights on mobile, not just desktop.

Step 6: Keep it alive after launch

A site built in an afternoon still needs looking after for years. Keep the code in GitHub so every change is saved, make sure your host takes daily backups, and before you ask the AI for a big change, test it on a copy rather than the live site. Our guide to staging sites explains the habit, and it applies to any site, not just WordPress.

The AI can write the website. It cannot renew your domain, notice that your form stopped sending, or restore last Tuesday's backup.

Where Serverlys fits in

If you built the site yourself and want it somewhere dependable, our hosting plans start at $7.95/mo, renewing at $12.62/mo, with free SSL, daily backups and the cPanel tools above. Domains are registered here in your own name.

If you would rather not do any of this, we can take it from where the AI stopped:

• Moving it for you. Our migration team can move your project off the builder's preview link and onto your own domain and hosting.
• Finishing it properly. Website development takes an AI-built prototype and makes it production-ready: secrets moved out of the browser, forms wired up, pages that search engines can read.
• Looking after it. ServerCare Essential ($149.95/mo) covers daily backups, monthly updates, uptime monitoring with alerts, malware scans and an hour of content changes each month.
• Starting from a professional design. If the AI version was a sketch of what you want, our website design plans start at $1,399 and include the build, hosting and analytics setup.

And when visitors start arriving, give them somewhere to ask questions. ConvoAI adds an AI agent to your site with one line of code, on a free plan, so the site you built in an afternoon can also answer your customers at midnight.