Learning how to use a new tool can be overwhelming. The goal of this guide is to help narrow down the vast possibilities so you can focus on the things most likely to help as you get started.
First things first. You’ll need to sign up for a Vercel account before you can start deploying any code. That same account will be used to sign in on this site as well.
Creating Your First Project
If you don’t have a repo ready to deploy, you can use a template to create a new project in a few clicks. If you already wrote your own code and just want to deploy, you can import an existing repo
For a step-by-step walkthrough please visit the get started with Vercel guide.
Custom Domain
A *.vercel.app subdomain was automatically assigned when you created your project, but you may want to use a custom domain instead. That way your site address could be something like my-awesome-website.com instead of my-awesome-website.vercel.app.
You have the option to buy a domain with Vercel or configure an existing domain for use with your project.
If you run into any trouble with domain setup, the troubleshooting domains can help with most common issues. You can also reach out to us by creating a new Help topic here on the forum or by using the support form at vercel.com/help.
Development Tools
Now that you have a project connected to a git remote repo, a new deployment will be created each time you push changes. That’s very convenient when everything is running smoothly, but sometimes development work gets tricky.
If you want to test a build before committing a code change, the Vercel CLI is a very useful tool.
vercel devlets you test your project without creating a new deployment for every code change.vercel buildcan warn you of build errors before you commit a code change.- vercel deploy lets you create a new deployment from from local repo without committing code changes.
Learn more in our CLI documentation.
Next Steps
When you’re ready to learn more about specific features, the Vercel Documentation has details about every feature available. And the Frequently Asked Questions post has some general debugging information to get you unstuck if you run into trouble.
You can also reach out in a Help topic if you have questions that you need a human to answer or in a Community topic if you want to chat about the latest thing you’re building.