Static-Serve

Overview

• This is a Cloud Project for hosting a static website on Google Cloud Infrastructure using Google Cloud Storage Service.
• Static websites are preferred by users with a smaller scope on website traffic and interactions. For instance, by NGO's, small businesses, personal blogs, landing pages, event websites etc.
• These websites consist of simple pages made of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. They do not contain any server side scripts like PHP, Node.js.

Setup Instructions

• A Google Cloud Account (free tier/ with billing account setup).
• A domain (rakshapadiyar.xyz domain from Godaddy domain registrar for this project).

Deployment Process

• Step 1: Built a simple website with HTML and used Bootstrap for styling. Added images of various travel destinations in the website.

• Step 2: Created a storage bucket named "www.rakshapadiyar.xyz" (without the double quotes). Creating a bucket with a domain name required a simple ownership verification by google.
  

• Step 3: Uploaded all the website files into the bucket directly from Google Cloud console.
  

• Step 4: Made all the data in the bucket as public so that the website content can be publicly accessed.
  -> Clicked on Bucket -> Permissions ->Grant Access -> allUsers as the Principal -> Storage Object Viewer as Role.

        -> Click on Allow Public Access.

        -> The bucket is now public.

• Step 5: Created a error.html page and uploaded it to the bucket. The uploaded file is by default public to internet as the entire bucket was made publicly accessible earlier.

• Step 6: Assigned specialty pages. Clicked on the bucket overflow menu option of the public bucket -> edit website configuration. Set index.html as the entry point and error.html as the custom error page.

• Step 7: Added DNS record in the website registrar. -> Signed-in into website registrar -> Selected the domain rakshapadiyar.xyz -> DNS Management ->added a dns record with the following values

          type : CNAME
          name : www
          data : c.storage.googleapis.com.
          ttl  : 600 seconds
  
         This connects the domain to the cloud storage.
  

Troubleshooting

• Tested if the website is rendered correctly from the cloud storage public url (https://storage.googleapis.com/www.rakshapadiyar.xyz/index.html).

• Used DNSchecker.com to verify if the DNS record update has propogated so that the bucket content is rendered when a user browses the domain rakshapadiyar.xyz.

• If the user tries to browser any non existing page, the error.html page is displayed as expected.

Conclusion

• The website was successfully hosted and was accessible over the domain rakshapadiyar.xyz after the assigned TTL seconds.

• Website accessed from my mobile phone.