How to Deploy Your First Censorship-Resistant Website Using Shakespeare

Most website builders make a quiet promise: behave according to our terms, and your site stays online. For personal blogs or business landing pages, that bargain works fine. But if you're a journalist in a restrictive country, an activist documenting human rights abuses, or simply someone who wants to own their digital presence without corporate intermediaries, that promise feels more like a threat.

Shakespeare offers a different arrangement. Launched in July 2025 at a Human Rights Foundation event, it's an open-source, browser-based tool that lets you build websites through natural language conversation and deploy them to Nostr's decentralized infrastructure. No coding. No corporate accounts. No single entity that can pull the plug.

Here's how to deploy your first censorship-resistant website in about fifteen minutes.

What You'll Need Before Starting

Shakespeare runs entirely in your browser, so there's nothing to download or install. You will need:

• A Nostr key pair (your identity on the protocol)
• A modern web browser
• An idea for what you want to build

If you don't have Nostr keys yet, browser extensions like nos2x or Alby can generate them for you. Think of these keys like a Bitcoin wallet: a public key (npub) that identifies you, and a private key (nsec) that proves you're you. Guard your private key carefully.

Step 1: Access Shakespeare and Log In

Visit shakespeare.diy or act1.shakespeare.diy in your browser. You'll be prompted to log in with your Nostr keys. If you're using a browser extension, this works similar to connecting a wallet to a web application.

Once connected, you're looking at an AI chat interface. No templates to browse, no drag-and-drop widgets. Just a conversation waiting to happen.

Step 2: Describe What You Want to Build

Shakespeare uses what it calls Nostr Service Providers (NSPs) to connect you with AI models that generate your website based on natural language descriptions. You might type something like:

"Build me a simple portfolio site with a dark theme. Include sections for my bio, recent projects, and contact information."

The AI generates the code. You see a preview. You iterate through conversation: "Make the header larger. Add a section for my writing. Change the accent color to blue."

This conversational approach means the technical barrier essentially disappears. You're describing outcomes, not wrestling with CSS or HTML. The AI handles the implementation details.

Shakespeare offers a free tier using Gemini Flash during its beta period. For more capable models (OpenAI, Anthropic, or local LLMs if you're running them), you pay per use via Bitcoin or USD. No subscriptions, no monthly fees eating away while you're not building.

Step 3: Deploy to a Shakespeare Subdomain

Once you're satisfied with your site, deployment takes one click. Shakespeare offers free subdomains at shakespeare.wtf (yourname.shakespeare.wtf, for example).

This option gets you online quickly with minimal friction. Your site is served through Soapbox's infrastructure, which provides censorship resistance compared to traditional hosting but does rely on a specific company's servers. For many use cases, this tradeoff makes sense: you get the ease of a managed service while still benefiting from Nostr's underlying architecture.

Step 4 (Optional): Full Decentralization via Nsite

If you want maximum censorship resistance, Shakespeare lets you export your static site files and upload them to Nsite.lol. This hosts your content on Nostr Blossom servers, making your site accessible via your npub.

The result is a website with no single point of failure. Your content lives across the Nostr network. There's no company to receive a takedown notice, no server to seize, no terms of service to violate. Anyone with your npub can find and view your site.

This approach requires a bit more effort but delivers on the full promise of decentralized hosting.

What Shakespeare's Act 2 Adds

The September 2025 release (Act 2) expanded Shakespeare's capabilities significantly. You can now import existing code from GitHub, GitLab, or Nostr Git repositories. The AI can enhance or extend code you've already written, not just generate from scratch.

You can also choose your AI provider rather than being locked into a single model. Some users prefer Anthropic's Claude for design work, OpenAI for technical precision, or local LLMs for privacy. Shakespeare's marketplace approach lets you pick based on the task.

Projects are stored locally in your browser using IndexedDB and LightningFS. Your data stays on your machine unless you choose to deploy it.

Understanding the Tradeoffs

Censorship resistance exists on a spectrum. Shakespeare.wtf subdomains are more resistant than traditional hosting but less decentralized than Nsite deployment. Both are dramatically more resilient than WordPress.com or Squarespace.

The natural language interface is genuinely accessible, but complex sites may require more back-and-forth than a skilled developer would need. You're trading precision control for ease of use.

And while Nostr's decentralized architecture makes takedowns difficult, it doesn't make them impossible. Sufficient pressure on Blossom servers, browser extensions, or other infrastructure could create friction. Censorship resistance is a property that degrades under pressure rather than an absolute guarantee.

Why This Matters

Before tools like Shakespeare, building a censorship-resistant website required understanding IPFS or running your own servers. The technical barrier kept decentralized hosting as a niche concern for developers and activists with technical support.

Now the barrier is describing what you want in plain language. That's a meaningful shift. The person documenting protests doesn't need to learn web development. The dissident writer can focus on their message rather than their infrastructure.

The philosophical alignment with Bitcoin's values (no KYC, no corporate dependencies, payment in sats if you prefer) makes Shakespeare appealing beyond the censorship use case. If you simply want to own your digital presence without intermediaries, this delivers that.

Getting Started Today

The path from idea to deployed site is straightforward:

1. Get Nostr keys if you don't have them
2. Visit shakespeare.diy and log in
3. Describe your site through conversation
4. Deploy with one click (shakespeare.wtf subdomain) or export to Nsite for full decentralization

The free tier with Gemini Flash means you can experiment without spending anything. If your needs grow, pay-per-use pricing keeps costs proportional to actual usage.

For activists, journalists, and anyone who's felt the precariousness of depending on platforms that can revoke access at will, Shakespeare offers something genuinely new: websites that belong to you, hosted on infrastructure no single entity controls.