In this blog, we are going to show you how to host a WordPress website for free using Google Cloud. We’ll stroll you thru the steps of developing a digital desktop instance, putting in WordPress, configuring your domain name, and installing SSL on the website. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have a fully functional WordPress website up and running on GCP for free without spending a dime.
- Scalability: GCP gives a tremendously scalable infrastructure that can take care of surprising site visitor spikes except for any downtime. You can effortlessly scale up or down your internet site assets primarily based on your website’s site visitors’ demands.
- Reliability: GCP gives a strong and dependable internet hosting infrastructure that ensures the most uptime for your website. With a world community of facts facilities and load balancing capabilities, your internet site can deal with excessive visitor volumes except for any overall performance issues.
- Security: GCP affords industry-leading safety aspects to defend your internet site from workable protection threats. With aspects like a tightly closed boot, encryption at rest, and DDoS protection, you can relax guaranteed that your internet site is secure and secure.
- Cost-effective: GCP affords a free tier that permits customers to host their internet site for free, making it a low-priced choice for small organizations and individuals.
- Integration with different Google services: GCP integrates seamlessly with different Google offerings like Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Google Search Console, making it effortless to manipulate and tune your website’s performance.
- Flexibility: GCP provides a large variety of internet hosting options, along with digital machines, containers, and serverless computing, giving you the flexibility to select the web hosting alternative that nicely fits your website’s wishes
Requirements
A Google account: To use GCP, you’ll need to have a Google account. If you don’t have one already, you can create one for free. click here to create one now.
A domain name: If you want to use your custom domain name for your website, you’ll need to purchase one from a domain registrar.
- Good internet: to help speed up the process.
Step 1:Create a Google Cloud account
click the link below which will take you to google cloud platform. Once you are there create a free tier accout for free. credit card will be required while creating the account but you wont be charged.
Step 2: installing WordPress Bitnami
On your google cloud dashboard click the 3 dots on the top left corner of your screen and clock market place.
Search for “WordPress Bitnami” and scroll down until you find the one written “WordPress Certified by Bitnami and Automattic” and click on it.
On the next page, click launch and you’ll need to enable the required APIs. Click the Enable button and it’ll install those APIs which could take about a few minutes.
It will take a few seconds or a minute to complete so just wait for it.
Step 3: Creating a Virtual Machine Instance
now configure your server VM instance,on the following:
- Deployment Name: Put any name which will make it easy to identify your instance, it helps if you have multiple instances.
- Zone: Use US-East1/ US-West1/ US-Central1. those are the only ones available for the free tier.
Under Machine family series
- Series: Select E2
- Machine type: e2-micro
For Boot Disk
- Boot disk type: Make sure it’s in “Standard persistent disk” for improved website speed
- Boot disk size GB: 10 GB should be enough, but you can increase it up to 30 GB if you want. The free tier allows up to 30 GB of storage.
Make sure that “Allow HTTP traffic from the internet” and “Allow HTTPS traffic from the internet” are unable and click deploy.
step 4: Update your WordPress profile
If the installation is successful, copy the given temporal password and click the Admin URL to login into your WordPress admin panel
On the next page for:
- Username or email address: type “user“
- password: paste the copied password.
And then click “Login“
- On the WordPress dashboard click on user, the edit user
change the following:
- Username: Put your Username
- email address: Put a valid email address.
- Click set new password.
copy the new password and save it since we will use it for future logins. then click update profile.
step 5: Assign a static IP address on Google Cloud
The given IP address assigned to your WordPress is temporary. You want to set up a static IP address so the IP does not change when you reboot your server or update any of the configurations.
Go back to the google cloud page, on the top left corner of your screen select the navigation menu.
On the navigation menu select: Compute Engine and VM instances. then choose your VM instance and select it.
On network interfaces click under the name, and on the left side click IP address
On the next page Select Reserve External static address.
Do the following:
- Name: put a name so you can easily identify which project is assigned to this IP address
- Description: put a description, If you want to ” not required”
Network Service Tier: pick Premium for better performance - IP Version: Select IPv4 since IPv6 is still not fully supported
- Type: Select Regional if it’s a local website or Global if it’s a global website with lots of traffic
- Region: Select the region where your WordPress VM instance is located. the same one you picked before deploying WordPress.
- Attached to: Select the VM instance to that you want to assign this IP address
- Click Reserve button
copy your new IP address
step 6: Point the IP address to your domain name
Go to your domain provider select DNS records and add the following custom resource records.
First record:
- Host Name: put the “@”
- Type: A
- TTL: 3600
- Data: <the static IP address you reserved>
second record:
- Host Name: www
- Type: A
- TTL: 3600
- Data: <the static IP address you reserved>
This might take up to an hour to point, if you want to check your status go to whatsmydns.com paste your domain name there and search if the IP address is the same as the one you just assigned then you are good to proceed
step 6: Set up the bncert-tool for SSL
Go back to your Google Cloud, deployment manager and select SSH
paste and click enter
sudo /opt/bitnami/bncert-tool
Put your domain name like this:
enter your domain under the Domain list. You want to put your domain, followed by a space, and then www.yourdomain for example if my domain is kofnet.co.za then I will write it like this “kofnet.co.za www.kofnet.co.za”
Then hit Enter.
follow the screenshot below: put y for yes and n for no
Then Enter a valid email address, and type yes if asked “Do you agree to these changes?”
Now your website should be ready for use.
