This website is running on a VM in Google Cloud Platform. I am taking advantage of the 1 year/$300 free credit GCP offers to new users.
The VM is an E2 micro running Debian.
The server software is Apache
Interested in making your own website like this one?
Here's a quick guide:
Make an account with Google Cloud Platform
Create a VM instance. I chose E2 Micro and it seems to be working so far. Make sure the boxes to enable HTTP and HTTPS traffic are checked.
Once your VM is running click the three lines in the top left corner then click VPC Network
Click on IP Addresses and promote the ephemeral external address of your new VM to a permanent address
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -make sure your shit is fresh.
sudo apt install apache2
You should now be able to type in the VM's IP address and see the default Apache homepage
Change your DNS A records with your domain provider to point to the IP of your new VM
Between waiting for DNS Records to resolve and how modern browsers avoid insecure http
your site probably won't work when you type in the domain but don't worry, we'll figure this out later.
sudo nano /etc/hostnames then edit to say example.com
sudo nano /etc/hosts and add a new line below the first: 127.0.1.1 example.com
cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
sudo touch example.com.conf
sudo cp 000-default.conf example.com.conf
sudo nano example.com.conf uncomment the line that says servername and then type your domain
sudo systemctl a2dissite 000-default.conf
sudo systemctl a2ensite example.com.conf
sudo systemctl reload apache2
sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache
sudo certbot --apache -d example.com then follow the prompts
You should be able to load your site with your domain name and https!
It will still be serving you the default apache page but now you can paste whatever you want into /var/www/html/index.html
Great Job! Now I made this cool link to take you back home