give your site a memory.
Your site remembers things: the people who sign in, the steps they finish, the questions they answer, the thoughts they leave. That memory is a database. Yours will be Postgres, run for you by a company called Neon, so you never have to look after a server. In this step you choose a plan, create the database, connect your copy to it, and create its tables.
(Postgres is the database. Neon is the company that runs it. You rent the running; the data is yours.)
🧮 How Much Will It Cost?
For a new site, most likely nothing. Use the calculator below before you sign up for anything. Start with the Dev / Personal scenario, which is where you are today, then move the sliders to see when you would outgrow the free plan:
- Storage — how much your site remembers. A brand-new copy uses a few megabytes
- Compute size — how powerful the database computer is while it is awake. 0.25 CU is plenty to start
- Active hours — how many hours a month it is awake. Neon puts it to sleep after 5 quiet minutes, so a small site is awake far less than the 744 hours in a month
Prices come from neon.com/pricing as of September 28, 2026. Check there before you pay for anything.
- Start on Free — 0.5 GB of storage and 100 compute hours a month is room for a new site, and it costs $0
- Move to Launch when the calculator says you have outgrown Free. There is no monthly minimum: you pay only for the hours and gigabytes you use
- Skip Scale for now. It is for sites that need more than 16 CU, which yours will not for a long time
Free databases always sleep after 5 minutes without visitors. The first visit after a quiet spell takes a moment longer while it wakes up. That is normal, not broken.
✓ Success: your site has a memory.
this is a work in progress
1️⃣ Create Your Neon Account
Go to neon.com and sign up. Use the same business email as your GitHub account, or sign in with GitHub, so everything about your build lives under one identity. You do not need a credit card for the Free plan.
2️⃣ Create Your Database
- Create a new project. Neon makes the database inside it for you
- Project name — your site name, the same one you gave your repository
- Postgres version — leave the default
- Region — choose AWS US East (N. Virginia). Your live site will run in Washington, D.C. by default, and a database next door answers faster
- Click Create project
3️⃣ Copy Your Two Connection Strings
A connection string is your database's address and password in one line. Your copy needs two versions of it. Your site uses a pooled connection, which lets many visitors share the database at once. The setup tools use a direct connection, which they need to create tables. On your project dashboard:
- Click Connect
- With Connection pooling turned on, copy the string. This is your DATABASE_URL. Its address contains -pooler
- Turn Connection pooling off and copy the string again. This is your DIRECT_DATABASE_URL. It is the same line without -pooler
If Neon offers a ready-made Prisma snippet, it may call the second one DIRECT_URL. In your copy it has to be named DIRECT_DATABASE_URL.
4️⃣ Put Them in .env
In the top folder of your copy (the one with package.json in it), create a file named .env. The name starts with a dot and has nothing after "env". Paste both strings into it, each inside quotes:
# .env (git ignores this file, so it never leaves your computer)
DATABASE_URL="postgresql://…@ep-your-project-pooler.us-east-1.aws.neon.tech/neondb?sslmode=require"
DIRECT_DATABASE_URL="postgresql://…@ep-your-project.us-east-1.aws.neon.tech/neondb?sslmode=require"Every key your site needs goes in this one .env file: your site and the tool that creates your tables both read it. Git ignores it, so it stays on your computer. Never commit it, and never rename it to something git does not ignore.
5️⃣ Create Your Tables
Your database is empty. One command builds every table your site needs, from the plan in prisma/schema.prisma. A second adds the setup steps you are following right now, so your site can track them with you:
# Create every table your site needs
npm run db:push
# Add the SETUP. steps you are following right now
npm run db:seed:setup- db:push ends with "Your database is now in sync with your Prisma schema"
- db:seed:setup prints "SETUP. curriculum seeded", then a note that no one can see the steps yet. That is expected: you give yourself access in Make yourself admin, then run it once more
“Never run npm run db:seed on a database with real data. It deletes steps and progress before it starts. db:seed:setup is safe to run any time.”
— unparty-app
Stop your site with Ctrl + C and start it again with npm run dev. It now has a database to read from.
🔑 Your Connection Strings Are Passwords
- Anyone with a connection string can read and delete everything in your database
- Never paste one into a chat, an email, or a regular file. When you ask an LLM about an error, delete the part between postgresql:// and @ first
- If one leaks, reset the password in Neon (Roles on your project dashboard), then copy both new strings into .env again
🤖 Ask Your LLM
I ran npm run db:push and got this error: [paste it, with the
password part of any connection string removed]. What does it
mean, and what should I check first?
Read prisma/schema.prisma and tell me, in plain words, what my
site stores about the people who use it.
Using the Neon pricing page, tell me when a site with [describe
your traffic] would outgrow the Free plan.✅ You Are Done When
- You have a Neon project, and you know which plan it is on (Free is fine)
- .env has both strings, and only DATABASE_URL contains -pooler
- npm run db:push says your database is in sync
- npm run db:seed:setup says the SETUP. curriculum was seeded
Next is Add sign-in. Once you can sign in to your own site and have made yourself admin, you will see this checklist inside it, with your progress saved in the database you just made.
“A site that remembers is a site you can build on.”
— unparty-app