You can use Google App Engine to host a static website. Static web pages can contain client-side technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Hosting your static site on App Engine can cost less than using a traditional hosting provider, as App Engine provides a free tier.
Sites hosted on App Engine are hosted on the appspot.com subdomain, such as
[my-project-id].appspot.com. After you deploy your site, you can map your own
domain name to your App Engine-hosted website.
Before you begin
Before you can host your website on Google App Engine:
Create a new GCP Console project or retrieve the project ID of an existing project to use:
Tip: You can retrieve a list of your existing project IDs with the gcloud command line tool.
Install and then initialize the Google Cloud SDK:
Listing your GCP Console project IDs
From the command line, run:
gcloud projects list
Creating a website to host on Google App Engine
Basic structure for the project
This guide uses the following structure for the project:
app.yaml: Configure the settings of your App Engine application.www/: Directory to store all of your static files, such as HTML, CSS, images, and JavaScript.css/: Directory to store stylesheets.style.css: Basic stylesheet that formats the look and feel of your site.
images/: Optional directory to store images.index.html: An HTML file that displays content for your website.js/: Optional directory to store JavaScript files.- Other asset directories.
Creating the app.yaml file
The app.yaml file is a configuration file that tells App Engine how to map
URLs to your static files. In the following steps, you will add handlers that
will load www/index.html when someone visits your website, and all static
files will be stored in and called from the www directory.
Create the app.yaml file in your application's root directory:
- Create a directory that has the same name as your project ID. You can find your project ID in the Console.
- In directory that you just created, create a file named
app.yaml. Edit the
app.yamlfile and add the following code to the file:runtime: python27 api_version: 1 threadsafe: true handlers: - url: / static_files: www/index.html upload: www/index.html - url: /(.*) static_files: www/\1 upload: www/(.*)
More reference information about the app.yaml file can be found in the
app.yaml reference
documentation.
Creating the index.html file
Create an HTML file that will be served when someone navigates to the root page
of your website. Store this file in your www directory.
<html>
<head>
<title>Hello, world!</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/style.css">
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello, world!</h1>
<p>
This is a simple static HTML file that will be served from Google App
Engine.
</p>
</body>
</html>
Deploying your application to App Engine
When you deploy your application files, your website will be uploaded to App
Engine. To deploy your app, run the following command from within the root
directory of your application where the app.yaml file is located:
gcloud app deploy
Optional flags:
- Include the
--projectflag to specify an alternate GCP Console project ID to what you initialized as the default in thegcloudtool. Example:--project [YOUR_PROJECT_ID] - Include the
-vflag to specify a version ID, otherwise one is generated for you. Example:-v [YOUR_VERSION_ID]
To learn more about deploying your app from the command line, see Deploying a Python App.
Viewing your application
To launch your browser and view the app at
https://[YOUR_PROJECT_ID].appspot.com, run the following command:
gcloud app browse
