I tried looking up how to host a nginx website for free on the Internet. Apparently it seems to be a non-existent topic and it’s crazy how little of anything I could find. No free hosts, no manual methods, no anything.
I tried to ask on Stackoverflow but it just got downvoted and deleted, so I figure I’d ask here.
There is no such thing as an nginx website unless you mean a website about nginx. In that case there are free hosts you can find on google.
Nginx is a web server.
I’m trying to take a website and host it manually using nginx. Sorry about that I worded this question terrible 
Everything I find says to rely on some other website to get it to work but I want to do it all manually. How do i go about that?
If by manually you mean not use an outside host then you need a dedicated IP address and a computer to use as a server. You can run this from home if you have a dedicated IP address. You could also colocate a server at a data center or purchase a dedicated server plan from a host and run what you want on it. You could also do this with a VPS account as well.
Perhaps you should explain what you mean by “manually”.
It is highly unlikely you are going to find a free host that allows full reign over the server configuration. Free hosts typically do not allow you to alter the server configuration. Furthermore, hosts that provide shared servers like godaddy typically will not allow you to alter server configuration as well. The only way to have full control over the server config including setting up nginx would be to use a cloud vendor like AWS or dedicated server. Allowing customers to modify a shared server would be security threat and changes would impact all other sites on that server. Cloud vendors spin up environments in virtual machines that do have this same (legacy?) limitation.
You need a computer on the internet. If you are happy to host the website on your own existing internet connection, you can download, configure and install NGINX on any computer on your network. You will need to set up port forwarding and ensure that the computer hosting the website is on 24/7/
Likely, you will also need to use a dynamic DNS service as home internet connections do not have static IP addresses.
Alternatively, (and this is what I suggest) you can buy a VPS for $5 a month and save all the hassle
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