Welcome to PC BOSS Online. Are you a website developer or designer who needs free hosting? Then you are at the right place.

In this post, we are going to show you how to get free powerful hosting for your web applications, websites and WordPress websites for 12 good months. Yes, 1 year.

I am going to show you the exact steps I followed to get this done for a client.

Google Cloud Services, one of the most powerful and reliable hosting services in the world offers a 12 months free hosting package for new users as a way to welcome them.

I am going to show you how to host a WordPress website for free using this package.

Requirements.

  • A valid credit card
  • A google account
  • A domain name for your website (optional)

We encourage every developer to leverage on this free tier offered by Google to keep hosting cost as low as possible.

How to get the 12 Months free hosting package.

Step 1: Signing up and activating the offer

  • Go to cloud.google.com
  • Click on ‘sign in’ located on the top menu. Sign in with your existing Gmail account

You will be taken to the google cloud platform dashboard.

  • Click on ‘Console’ at the top right corner
  • Agree to the terms of service and click ‘Continue’ to proceed
  • On the top of the page, you are going to see an offer of $300 credit to explore Google Cloud Platform
  • Click ‘Activate’ to claim the offer
  • Select your country and agree to the terms of service

Step 2: setting up your payment profile

  • Select account type (business), enter name and address and key in your credit card details.
  • Click on ‘Continue’ to proceed

Your free one-year hosting package has been fully activated.

Step 3: Creating a new project and deploying your website.

We will use WordPress as an example in this post.

  • Click on ‘My First Project’ on the top menu
  • Click on ‘New Project’
  • Enter the project name and click ‘Create’ to proceed
  • Click on the navigation menu on the upper left corner
  • Select Marketplace
  • Scroll down to the Blog & CMS Section
  • Select WordPress Certified by Bitnami
  • Click on Launch on Compute Engine
  • Enter required details (deployment name, zone, machine type) and leave the rest at default
  • Accept terms of service and click on ‘Deploy’
  • Sit back relax and wait for it to complete.
  • The site details will be displayed to you. (site’s IP address, admin link, username and default password)

Note IP address is not static. You are required to change it to a static one to prevent a change of IP in case you restart the virtual machine

Changing IP address to static.

  • Click on the navigation menu on the upper left corner
  • Click on VPC Network and select external IP addresses.
  • Change the type to static under the type column
  • Give a name to the static IP and click ‘Reserve’
  • The IP will remain static and will never change.

Linking the IP address to your domain name.

  • Click on the navigation menu on the upper left corner
  • Scroll down to Network Services and select Cloud DNS
  • Click on Create Zone
  • Fill in the details

Zone type: public

Zone name: any preferred name (could be website name)

DNS Name: type in your domain name

DNSSEC: leave it off

  • Click on ‘Create’ to proceed
  • You’ve successfully created a DNS Zone. Your DNS Records will be displayed to you.
  • We need to add to more records
  • Click on add record
  • Leave DNS name and resource type as it is
  • Enter the IP address of your instance
  • And then click ‘Create’
  • Another DNS record needs to be added

For the DNS NAME: www

Resource Record Type: CNAME

Canonical name: yourdomainname.com

  • Click create.
  • Now we have all the DNS records we need.

We are going to use these records to link the domain name to the website.

Head on to your domain name provider and change the nameservers to the ones provided by Google Cloud.

You have successfully linked your domain name to your website.

Enjoy your one year free hosting.

 

If you had any challenge doing this, kindly leave a comment below. We are glad if you were able to get it done.

Support us by sharing this article to friends and family especially web developers who need free hosting for their websites.

Author

  • Francis Amoah Nuako

    Francis Amoah Nuako, professionally known as PC Boss, is a Ghanaian blogger and SEO expert. He is the founder of PC Boss Online, a tech blog that publishes technology-related articles primarily for Ghanaian audiences. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSc Nursing) and a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology (BSc Information Technology) from the University of Health and Allied Sciences and Ghana Communication Technology University, respectively.

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Post update on October 19, 2020