This tutorial describes how to configure a Cloud Storage bucket to host a static website for a domain you own. Static web pages can contain client-side technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. They cannot contain dynamic content such as server-side scripts like PHP.
Since Cloud Storage doesn't support custom domains with HTTPS on its own, this tutorial uses Cloud Storage with HTTP(S) Load Balancing to serve content from a custom domain over HTTPS. For more ways to serve content from a custom domain over HTTPS, see the related troubleshooting topic. You can also use Cloud Storage to serve custom domain content over HTTP, which doesn't require a load balancer.
For examples and tips on static web pages, including how to host static assets for a dynamic website, see the Static Website page.
Objectives
This tutorial shows you how to:- Create a bucket.
- Upload and share your site's files.
- Set up a load balancer and SSL certificate.
- Connect your load balancer to your bucket.
- Point your domain to your load balancer using an
A
record. - Test the website.
Costs
This tutorial uses the following billable components of Google Cloud:
- Cloud Storage
- Cloud Load Balancing
See the Monitoring your charges tip for details on what charges may be incurred when hosting a static website, and see the Pricing page for details on Cloud Storage costs.
Before you begin
-
Sign in to your Google Account.
If you don't already have one, sign up for a new account.
-
In the Google Cloud Console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.
-
Make sure that billing is enabled for your Cloud project. Learn how to confirm that billing is enabled for your project.
- Have a domain that you own or manage. If you don't have an existing domain,
there are many services through which you can register a new domain, such as
Google Domains.
This tutorial uses the domain
example.com
. - Verify that
you own or manage the domain that you will be using. Make sure you are
verifying the top-level domain, such as
example.com
, and not a subdomain, such aswww.example.com
.Note: If you own the domain you are associating to a bucket, you might have already performed this step in the past. If you purchased your domain through Google Domains, verification is automatic.
- Have a few website files you want to serve. This tutorial works best if you
have at least an index page (
index.html
) and a 404 page (404.html
). - Have the following Identity and Access Management roles: Storage Object Admin and Network Admin.
Creating a bucket
To create a bucket named www.example.com
:
Console
- Open the Cloud Storage browser in the Google Cloud Console.
Open the Cloud Storage browser Click Create bucket to open the bucket creation form.
Enter your bucket information and click Continue to complete each step:
Set the Name of your bucket, which we recommend making the same as your domain name to make a later step easier. For example,
www.example.com
.Select the Location type and Location of your bucket. For example, Region and us-east1.
Select Standard Storage for the Storage class.
Select Uniform for Access control.
Click Create.
If successful, the Bucket details page opens and displays the text "There are no live objects in this bucket."
See Troubleshooting for how to get detailed error information about failed operations in the Cloud Storage browser.
gsutil
Use the gsutil mb
command:
gsutil mb -b on gs://www.example.com
If successful, the command returns:
Creating gs://www.example.com/...
Code samples
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage C++ API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage C# API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Go API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Java API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Node.js API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage PHP API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Python API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Ruby API reference documentation.
C++
C#
Go
Java
Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
REST APIs
JSON API
- Get an authorization access token from the OAuth 2.0 Playground. Configure the playground to use your own OAuth credentials.
Create a
.json
file that assigns your website name to thename
property:{ "name": "www.example.com" }
Use
cURL
to call the JSON API. For www.example.com:curl -X POST --data-binary @website-bucket-name.json \ -H "Authorization: Bearer ya29.AHES6ZRVmB7fkLtd1XTmq6mo0S1wqZZi3-Lh_s-6Uw7p8vtgSwg" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ "https://storage.googleapis.com/storage/v1/b?project=my-static-website"
XML API
- Get an authorization access token from the OAuth 2.0 Playground. Configure the playground to use your own OAuth credentials.
Use
cURL
to call the XML API to create a bucket with your website name. For www.example.com:curl -X PUT \ -H "Authorization: Bearer ya29.AHES6ZRVmB7fkLtd1XTmq6mo0S1wqZZi3-Lh_s-6Uw7p8vtgSwg" \ -H "x-goog-project-id: my-static-website" \ "https://storage.googleapis.com/www.example.com"
Uploading your site's files
Add the files you want your website to serve to the bucket:
Console
- Open the Cloud Storage browser in the Google Cloud Console.
Open the Cloud Storage browser In the list of buckets, click on the name of the bucket that you created.
The Bucket details page opens, with the Objects tab selected.
Click the Upload files button.
In the file dialog, browse to the desired file and select it.
After the upload completes, you should see the file name along with file information displayed in the bucket.
See Troubleshooting for how to get detailed error information about failed operations in the Cloud Storage browser.
gsutil
Use the gsutil cp
command to copy files to your bucket. For example, to
copy the file index.html
from its current location Desktop
:
gsutil cp Desktop/index.html gs://www.example.com
If successful, the command returns:
Copying file://Desktop/index.html [Content-Type=text/html]... Uploading gs://www.example.com/index.html: 0 B/2.58 KiB Uploading gs://www.example.com/index.html: 2.58 KiB/2.58 KiB
Code samples
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage C++ API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage C# API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Go API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Java API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Node.js API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage PHP API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Python API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Ruby API reference documentation.
C++
C#
Go
Java
Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
REST APIs
JSON API
- Get an authorization access token from the OAuth 2.0 Playground. Configure the playground to use your own OAuth credentials.
Use
cURL
to call the JSON API with aPOST
Object request. For the index page of www.example.com:curl -X POST --data-binary @index.html \ -H "Content-Type: text/html" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer ya29.AHES6ZRVmB7fkLtd1XTmq6mo0S1wqZZi3-Lh_s-6Uw7p8vtgSwg" \ "https://storage.googleapis.com/upload/storage/v1/b/www.example.com/o?uploadType=media&name=index.html"
XML API
- Get an authorization access token from the OAuth 2.0 Playground. Configure the playground to use your own OAuth credentials.
Use
cURL
to call the XML API with aPUT
Object request. For the index page of www.example.com:curl -X PUT --data-binary @index.html \ -H "Authorization: Bearer ya29.AHES6ZRVmB7fkLtd1XTmq6mo0S1wqZZi3-Lh_s-6Uw7p8vtgSwg" \ -H "Content-Type: text/html" \ "https://storage.googleapis.com/www.example.com/index.html"
Sharing your files
To make all objects in your bucket readable to everyone on the public internet:
Console
- Open the Cloud Storage browser in the Google Cloud Console.
Open the Cloud Storage browser In the list of buckets, click on the name of the bucket that you want to make public.
Select the Permissions tab near the top of the page.
Click the Add members button.
The Add members dialog box appears.
In the New members field, enter
allUsers
.In the Select a role drop down, select the Cloud Storage sub-menu, and click the Storage Object Viewer option.
Click Save.
Click Allow public access.
Once shared publicly, a link icon appears for each object in the public access column. You can click on this icon to get the URL for the object.
See Troubleshooting for how to get detailed error information about failed operations in the Cloud Storage browser.
gsutil
Use the gsutil iam ch
command:
gsutil iam ch allUsers:objectViewer gs://www.example.com
Code samples
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage C++ API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage C# API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Go API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Java API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Python API reference documentation.
C++
C#
Go
Java
Python
REST APIs
JSON API
- Get an authorization access token from the OAuth 2.0 Playground. Configure the playground to use your own OAuth credentials.
Create a .json file that contains the following information:
{ "bindings":[ { "role": "roles/storage.objectViewer", "members":["allUsers"] } ] }
Use
cURL
to call the JSON API with aPUT
Bucket request:curl -X PUT --data-binary @JSON_FILE_NAME.json \ -H "Authorization: Bearer OAUTH2_TOKEN" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ "https://storage.googleapis.com/storage/v1/b/BUCKET_NAME/iam"
Where:
JSON_FILE_NAME
is the name of the file you created in Step 2.OAUTH2_TOKEN
is the access token you created in Step 1.BUCKET_NAME
is the name of the bucket whose objects you want to make public. For example,my-bucket
.
XML API
Making all objects in a bucket publicly readable is not supported by the XML API. Use gsutil or the JSON API instead, or set ACLs for each individual object.
To make individual objects in your bucket publicly accessible, you need to switch your bucket's Access control mode to Fine-grained. Generally, making all files in your bucket publicly accessible is easier and faster.
Visitors receive a http 403
response code when requesting the URL for a
non-public or non-existent file. See the next section for information on how to
add an error page that uses a http 404
response code.
Recommended: Assigning specialty pages
You can assign an index page suffix, which is controlled by the MainPageSuffix
property, and a custom error page, which is controlled by the NotFoundPage
property. Assigning either is optional, but without an index page, nothing is
served when users access your top-level site, for example,
https://www.example.com
. For more information about the MainPageSuffix
and
NotFoundPage
properties, see Specialty pages.
In the following sample, the MainPageSuffix
is set to index.html
and
NotFoundPage
is set to 404.html
:
Console
- Open the Cloud Storage browser in the Google Cloud Console.
Open the Cloud Storage browser In the list of buckets, find the bucket you created.
Click the Bucket overflow menu (
) associated with the bucket and select Edit website configuration.
In the website configuration dialog, specify the main page and error page.
Click Save.
See Troubleshooting for how to get detailed error information about failed operations in the Cloud Storage browser.
gsutil
Use the gsutil web set
command to set the MainPageSuffix
property
with the -m
flag and the NotFoundPage
with the -e
flag:
gsutil web set -m index.html -e 404.html gs://www.example.com
If successful, the command returns:
Setting website config on gs://www.example.com/...
Code samples
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage C++ API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Go API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Java API reference documentation.
For more information, see the
Cloud Storage Python API reference documentation.
C++
Go
Java
Python
REST APIs
JSON API
- Get an authorization access token from the OAuth 2.0 Playground. Configure the playground to use your own OAuth credentials.
Create a
.json
file that sets themainPageSuffix
andnotFoundPage
properties in awebsite
object to the desired pages:{ "website":{ "mainPageSuffix": "index.html", "notFoundPage": "404.html" } }
Use
cURL
to call the JSON API with aPATCH
Bucket request. For www.example.com:curl -X PATCH --data-binary @web-config.json \ -H "Authorization: Bearer ya29.AHES6ZRVmB7fkLtd1XTmq6mo0S1wqZZi3-Lh_s-6Uw7p8vtgSwg" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ "https://storage.googleapis.com/storage/v1/b/www.example.com"
XML API
- Get an authorization access token from the OAuth 2.0 Playground. Configure the playground to use your own OAuth credentials.
Create a
.xml
file that sets theMainPageSuffix
andNotFoundPage
elements in aWebsiteConfiguration
element to the desired pages:<WebsiteConfiguration> <MainPageSuffix>index.html</MainPageSuffix> <NotFoundPage>404.html</NotFoundPage> </WebsiteConfiguration>
Use
cURL
to call the XML API with aPUT
Bucket request andwebsiteConfig
query string parameter. For www.example.com:curl -X PUT --data-binary @web-config.xml \ -H "Authorization: Bearer ya29.AHES6ZRVmB7fkLtd1XTmq6mo0S1wqZZi3-Lh_s-6Uw7p8vtgSwg" \ https://storage.googleapis.com/www.example.com?websiteConfig
Setting up your load balancer and SSL certificate
Cloud Storage doesn't support custom domains with HTTPS on its own, so you also need to set up an SSL certificate attached to an HTTPS load balancer to serve your website through HTTPS. This section shows you how to add your bucket to a load balancer's backend and how to add a new Google-managed SSL certificate to the load balancer's front end.
- Go to the Load balancing page in the Google Cloud Console.
Go to the Load balancing page - Under HTTP(S) load balancing, click Start configuration.
- Select From Internet to my VMs and click Continue.
- Give your load balancer a Name, such as
example-lb
.
Configuring the backend
- Click Backend configuration.
- In the Create or select backend services & backend buckets dropdown, go to the Backend buckets sub-menu, and click the Create a backend bucket option.
- Choose a Name for the backend bucket, such as
example-bucket
. - Click Browse under Cloud Storage bucket.
- Select the
www.example.com
bucket and click Select. - If you want to use Cloud CDN, select the checkbox for Enable Cloud CDN. Leave the Cache mode selection as Cache static content. Note that Cloud CDN may incur additional costs.
- Click Create.
Configuring host rules and path matchers
Host rules and path matchers are configuration components of an external HTTP(S) load balancer's URL map.
- Click Host and path rules.
- Leave Mode at the default Simple host and path rule for the backend
bucket
example-bucket
, which you created earlier.
Configuring the frontend
This section shows you how to configure the HTTPS protocol and create an SSL certificate. You can also select an existing certificate or upload a self-managed SSL certificate.
- Click Frontend configuration.
Configure the values for the following fields:
- Protocol: HTTPS
- Network Service Tier: Premium
- IP version: IPv4. If you prefer IPv6, see IPv6 termination for additional information.
For the IP address field:
- In the dropdown, click Create IP address.
- In the Reserve a new static IP address pop-up, enter
example-ip
for the Name of the IP address. - Click Reserve.
For Port, select 443.
For the Certificate field, select Create a new certificate. The certificate creation form appears in a panel. Configure the following:
- Name:
example-ssl
- Create mode: Create Google-managed certificate
- Domains:
www.example.com
. If you want to serve your content through additional domains such as the root domainexample.com
, press Enter to add them on additional lines. Each certificate has a limit of 100 domains.
- Name:
Click Create.
Click Done.
Reviewing the configuration
- Click Review and finalize.
- Review the Backend configuration, Host and path rules, and Frontend configuration.
- Click Create.
You may need to wait a few minutes for the load balancer to be created.
Connecting your domain to your load balancer
After the load balancer is created, click the name of your load balancer:
example-lb
. Note the IP address associated with the load balancer: for
example, 30.90.80.100
. To point your domain to your load balancer, create an
A
record using your domain registration service. If you added multiple domains
to your SSL certificate, you must add an A record for each one, all pointing to
the load balancer's IP address. For example, to create A
records for
www.example.com
and example.com
:
NAME TYPE DATA www A 30.90.80.100 @ A 30.90.80.100
If you are using Google Domains, see Create an A
or CNAME
record
for more information.
Recommended: Monitoring the SSL certificate status
It might take up to 60-90 minutes for Google Cloud to provision the certificate and make the site available through the load balancer. To monitor the status of your certificate:
Console
- Go to the Load balancing page in the Google Cloud Console.
Go to the Load balancing page - Click on the name of your load balancer:
example-lb
. - Click on the name of the SSL certificate associated with the load balancer:
example-ssl
. - The Status and Domain status rows show the certificate status. Both must be active in order for the certificate to be valid for your website.
gcloud
To check the certificate status, run the following command:
gcloud beta compute ssl-certificates describe certificate-name \ --global \ --format="get(name,managed.status)"
To check the domain status, run the following command:
gcloud beta compute ssl-certificates describe certificate-name \ --global \ --format="get(managed.domainStatus)"
See Troubleshooting SSL certificates for more information about certificate status.
Testing the website
Once the SSL certificate is active, verify that content is served from the
bucket by going to https://www.example.com/test.html
, where test.html
is an
object stored in a bucket named www.example.com
. If you set the
MainPageSuffix
property, https://www.example.com
goes to index.html
.
Cleaning up
After you've finished the Hosting a static website tutorial, you can clean up the resources that you created on Google Cloud so they won't take up quota and you won't be billed for them in the future. The following sections describe how to delete or turn off these resources.
Deleting the project
The easiest way to eliminate billing is to delete the project that you created for the tutorial.
To delete the project:
- In the Cloud Console, go to the Manage resources page.
- In the project list, select the project that you want to delete, and then click Delete.
- In the dialog, type the project ID, and then click Shut down to delete the project.
Deleting the load balancer and bucket
If you don't want to delete the entire project, delete the load balancer and bucket that you created for the tutorial:
- Go to the Load balancing page in the Google Cloud Console.
Go to the Load balancing page - Select the checkbox next to
example-lb
. - Click Delete.
- (Optional) Select the checkbox next to the resources you want to delete along
with the load balancer, such as the
www.example.com
bucket or theexample-ssl
SSL certificate. - Click Delete load balancer or Delete load balancer and the selected resources.
Releasing a reserved IP address
To delete the reserved IP address you used for the tutorial:
In the Cloud Console, go to the External IP addresses page.
Select the checkboxes next to
example-ip
.Click Release static address.
In the confirmation window, click Delete.
What's next
- Learn how to serve your static website over HTTP.
- See examples and tips for using buckets to host a static website.
- Visit the troubleshooting section for hosting a static website.
- Learn about hosting static assets for a dynamic website.
- Learn about other Google Cloud web serving solutions.
- Try other Google Cloud tutorials that use Cloud Storage.
Try it for yourself
If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how Cloud Storage performs in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.
Try Cloud Storage free