Instructions for deploying a website to the web using Google Cloud Platform and Caddy
- Head to the Google Cloud Platform Console and sign in with your Google account.
- Create a new project
- Enable billing and input your credit card or other billing details
- Enable compute engine
- Head to
Compute Engine > VM Instances - Select "Create Instance"
- Name your instance whatever you want, and you can keep the zone and region as whatever the default is.
- Change the "Machine Type" to "e2-micro"
- This is so that you can get the server for free!
- Under "boot disk" select "change"
- I recommend changing the version to "Debian 11" or, if you prefer Ubuntu, change "Operating System" to Ubuntu, and version to "Ubuntu 21.10"
- Change the "boot disk type" to "Standard persistent disk"
- IMPORTANT - make sure to check the boxes saying "Allow HTTP traffic" and "Allow HTTPS traffic"
- If the boxes aren't checked, people cannot visit your website!
- Hit "Create"
Your VPS is now created! You can access it by hitting the "SSH" button in the VM Instances list.
- A static IP address needs to be reserved so that your server's IP address won't change
- Go to
VPC Network > External IP Addresses - You should see your VPS' IP address listed
- At the far right, press the "reserve" button
- Choose a name for the IP address
- And that's it!
Make sure to take note of this IP address for when you connect it to your domain!
- Login to your domain provider (for example, namecheap), and go to your DNS settings page
- Create a new A record for your domain:
- Under "host" you may need to leave it blank or put @ (depending on your domain provider)
- This connects the "apex" domain to your VPS. If you prefer a subdomain, such as "www", put that here instead
- If you want both your apex domain and "www", create 2 A records
- Under "value" put the IP address from the above step
- Under "host" you may need to leave it blank or put @ (depending on your domain provider)
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install python3 python3-pip git htop vim screen dnsutils neofetchsudo apt install -y debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring apt-transport-https
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/gpg.key' | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/caddy-stable-archive-keyring.gpg
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/debian.deb.txt' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install caddycd ~
# here, put in your Caddyfile config
nano Caddyfile
sudo caddy stop
sudo caddy startgit clone https://github.com/WinHacks/flask-workshop
cd flask-workshop
cp *.json secrets.json
# update your secret
nano secrets.json
# change debug=True to debug=False in app.py
nano app.py
# install dependencies
pip3 install flask flask-sqlalchemy
# run the app!
python3 app.py &