A minimal Flask server serving static HTML pages that deploys seamlessly to Google AppEngine, no troubleshooting needed. It also comes with a minimal HTML template skeleton in Jinja.
This skeleton complies with GAE's format although it won't run you through their instructions to set up a GAE's project.
See a live example of this template running on GAE.
[As of April 2020, and purely informative]
GAE runs your server for FREE as long as you are under a million visits a day or so. You only need to purchase the domain name, and that's optional if you can be content with PROJECTNAME.appspot.com.
You would need to pay ($1 a month) if you want Gmail to host the emails for your domain.
Run your server locally. When you are happy with the result, deploy to Google AppEngine (you will need to setup that account) and your website will be on internet.
One time only install.
git clone https://github.com/ThomasJannaud/appengine_python_skeleton.git
python -m venv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt # Re-run this if you add libraries
Most of this skeleton consists of a minimal Flask server for you to customize.
Edit the webpages in the Templates/ folder and style them in the static/ folder.
Change the logic in page_handler.py to serve more urls or in main.py to serve anything else than static pages.
To run, you only need:
python main.py
The server is now running on localhost:8080. Just navigate to either one of:
- localhost:8080
- localhost:8080?name=Thomas
- localhost:8080/contact
The nice thing about Flask is that you can update your HTML templates or your Python code and Flask should take the changes into account without restarting the server.
You need to have a GAE account and create a project there. It will ask at some point for Billing info but again it is free if you use the app normally, and if you are unsure set a budget (e.g $1 a month) to not have any bad surprise.
Your website will be hosted on https://PROJECTID.appspot.com but if you own a domain you can point it to this host.
Follow the instructions as you install gcloud to validate your credentials. Then run
gcloud app deploy --project PROJECTID
to deploy. The setup might take time but once it is ready one command line is enough.