Web Hosting on Google Cloud: Intro, Process,Pricing and More
If you arelooking for a place to quickly host your website but don't have access to anyweb server, Google Drive can be your perfect solution. You can use Google Driveto host your basic website or even complex JavaScript-based website. Here, youare able to upload and publish any kind of static content on your website likeHTML pages, CSS, icons, audio and video files and also podcasts.
We all knowGoogle as it is the most popular search engine. Everyone uses Goggle and atleast one of their products. Not many people are aware of website hosting onGoogle. This article will help you understand website hosting by Google and howit works.
Google Website Hosting- Introduction
Google's webhosting is a part of the Google Cloud Platform that is a service offered byGoogle; it provides cloud hosting and tools for developers and smallbusinesses. Computing Engine is the most used product for hosting any website.It is a cloud VPS hosting that you need to manage you. Though technically you areallowed to use Compute Engine for hosting other stuff, and web hosting isgenerally related to it.
Web Hosting by Google is Free or Paid?
This is not completely free. But youget $300 free credit if you are a new user. You can use those credits for 12months and then the credit expires. Once you use up you $300 credits in thefirst month, they will not be valid for the next 11 months. And if you are anexisting customer, you cannot use the $300 free credits' promo.
After you spend the credits, the bills canstack up pretty quickly. The free tier holds multiple limitations. So you needto be careful while using the free tier. Make sure to go through their usagepolicies. If you don't meet their Free Tier Criteria, you will have to pay. Itmay come as a surprise if you do not know how this Free Tier works.
Price for Website Hosting on Google Cloud
It is reallysurprising but true that the pricing of GCP Cloud Compute is billed per secondof usage. Depending on what kind of virtual machine you order, the pricing maydiffer. A server with 3.75GB of RAM and 1 vCPU is $24.2725 on monthly basis.Here, disk space is extra, at $0.040 per GB/month.
From Desktop to Google Drive
If you havedecided to get website hosting on Google Cloud, take all your files on GoogleDrive from the desktop. For this, put all your website files in a zip file andthen click to upload that zip file to your Google Drive. Once the file hasuploaded, the tool will generate the public URL of your site in the same step.
In case, youare using the tool for the first time, you may have to click the Authorizebutton since the script needs permission to upload that zip file to your GoogleDrive.
Internally,Google Script does all the work for you. When you click upload, the applicationbuild a folder in your Google Drive, and it also changes the sharing permissionto a public and then generates the googledrive.com URL using the ID of the newfolder.
There aresome important factors that you should know before hosting your website onGoogle Drive. First of all, you should hold an index.html as that file will beserved when someone tries to access the homepage of your website. Thereafter,Google Drive site has a URL structure like googledrive.com/host/and you cannotchange this default URL.
Is Google's Hosting Compatible withWordPress?
GoogleCompute Engine can be easily used to host WordPress sites. It has a 1-clickinstallation option, which can help you at the beginning. The g1-small VMinstance with 1 shared vCPU + 1.7 GB RAM costs $13.61 per month.
But here youneed to keep this in mind that Google does not offer support for WordPress.This is not a managed WordPress hosting service. You can easily get awell-managed WordPress hosting plan at the Copahost. You will also receive acontrol panel, 24/7 live technical support, and many more. For WordPresshosting, Pricing at Copahost begins at €1, 99 per month.
Steps to Host Your Webpages on Google Drive
Publish anykind of static content on your website including HTML, pages, images, icons,audio, and video.
Steps to be followed:
The Problem with Hosting on Google Drive
How manysites do you frequent that are hosted at Google Drive?
Chances arethe answer is zero. No webmaster that is serious about creating a useful andfamous website uses Google Drive as their hosting solution.
It is a neatservice for a short-term project website or as a staging area where you can seeHTML and CSS elements live in your browser without pushing them to a finalsite, but website hosting on cloud is not a very nice option for a publishedsite.
No matterthe size of your site, or your plans for future expansion, you will get betterservices by switching away from Google Drive to professional website hosting.
Free websitehosting with a file storage service like Google Drive is fun, a good learningtool, and it has its place. Although, it is very far from an ideal hostingenvironment for the vast majority of sites for several reasons.
First ofall, storage-service hosting options like Google Drive and comparablealternative only support client-side language like CSS, HTML as well asJavaScript.
While allsites make use of the client-side language, the vast majority also make use ofserver-side languages like Python, ASP.NET, PHP, Ruby, and Perl. But if yoursite is hosted by Google Drive, you will not be able to use server-sidelanguage, mainly limiting what you can achieve with your site.
Another factis that because you cannot use backend or server-side languages, you do not getaccess to site-building software including content management systems likeJoomla, WordPress, e-commerce platforms like Magento and AbanteCart, and forumscripts like phpBB and MyBB.
The third iswhen you are limited to client-side languages your website is unscalable.Anytime you wish to change anything in your site it will impact multiple pages.In case, the site is coded entirely in static HTML and CSS, you will have toopen every file to make the change.
Now assume,you have a website hosting on Google drive and the site grows to includehundreds of pages, and think of how much time it will take to do any simplechange in each file.
Withserver-side languages, you can easily create your site with software that willallow you to do change in minutes and have it pushed to every page of the site.
A fourth andimportant factor is that when you are taking website hosting on Google cloud,you end up with a very clunky and memorable domain name.
Although,you are free to buy a custom domain, and use domain forwarding with masking tomake it look like your website is hosted on a web server. But if you do notunderstand what you just read getting this set up correctly can be tough foryou and it won't result in ideal search engine ranking results.
For thesereasons, the demise of website hosting on Google drive is the perfect time toupgrade to a professional web hosting service.
You willprobably be happiest with a cheap and no website hosting price. And there aretons of awesome free web hosting sites to pick from, but this path has lots ofdownsides. But if your website is simple, static and just for, hosting freecloud storage service is the perfect option for you. Web Hosting hosting inGoogle is more reliable than most free web hosts and there is almost nolearning curve.
