To give some further insight to what was written above:
You can create and publish your project without any downloadable/playable (if browser content) files, but unless you want to show it on your profile or make sure people can easily find it via its browser adress (as draft/restricted are a bit more "complicated" in that matter), you shouldn't do it. You can see it as a good way to make it "visible" at first, but as mentioned you will not be listed into the search results. Not only that but you basically "miss your chance" to appear in the recent category, especially if your publishing and possible indexing into the search results have a larger time gap between them. If you post a devlog for a project and categorize it (justifiably) into "Major update" you may get a push in "Recent". All that said, the general spirit here is that you should not rely on the recent tab and search results too much anyway, but it is still better than wasting it if you do not have the reasons I wrote about at the beginning.
Another thing I want to point out: Devlog Posts are not bound to the same rule you have set for your project if I remember correctly. For example, you can post a devlog for a draft/restricted project and set that devlog to published. It will appear in the devlog section of the website (not this discussion board), as well as in that specific recent tab. I would assume general blog posts you can create from Dashboard -> Posts (and not choosing a specific project you have created) will work the same way. So basically: You can create devlogs and show your progress to people, even without setting your entire project page to public. And when users are on a devlog of a project, clicking on a link that leads them to the actual project should work normally if I recall. So they can visit your website for what it already is from the devlog if they are interested.
All the above is meant as: Publishing -> Set to public when editing a project page / devlog. (Instead of choosing draft or restricted. If you just create a page, it is automatically set to draft at first. So creation is not necessarily publishing in that context.
About the discussion board: You can also share your progress about a project in the devlog section of this community. (It is basically the overall discussion board for itch.io). It was created before devlogs existed, but you can still see it as a way to share your progress directly with the people who visit this place. Mind that you should create and edit only one topic (per project I believe, make sure you read the rules that are openable above each category of this board).