Host a static website in Heroku for FREE using Python Flask framework

Guideline:

Part 1: Push your website live to Heroku

1.Follow Heroku Documention

-Download [Git](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git)
-Download [Heroku CLI](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/getting-started-with-python#set-up) (Command Line Interface)

2.Create a Heroku account

3.Create a project folder and organize the folder structure - in your Terminal / Command Line Prompt

$mkdir Website_Example

$cd Website_Example

$mkdir templates

so your folder structure will look like:

Website_Example

templates > index.html

4.Create a virtual environment and activate it

$pip install virtualenv

make a virtualenv called “venv”:

$virtualenv venv

activate this virtual env:

- macOS:

    $source venv\bin\activate

- windows:

    $venv\Scripts\activate

5.Init Git in project folder

$git init

6.pip install all required dependencies:

$pip install Flask

$pip install gunicorn

7.Create a Flask app/backend

$touch index.py

from flask import Flask, render_template


app = Flask(__name__)


@app.route("/") #www.domain.com - render homepage
def index():

    return render_template("index.html")


if __name__ == "__main__":

    app.run(debug=False)

8.Create a Procfile

$touch Procfile

make sure you capitalize the first letter and name the file WITHOUT any extension. in your Procfile, include:

web: gunicorn index:app

make sure you:

1. do NOT include any space between “index:” and “app” - “index” is the .py file where your Flask backend lives in and “app” is the variable name of the flask object that’s defined in index.py file.

2. include ONE space between “web:” and “gunicorn” -

9.Create a requirements.txt file

$pip freeze > requirements.txt

10.Push our app/website to Heroku

$heroku login

-your browser pops up asking you to log into your Heroku CLI

$heroku create

-create a new Heroku app randomly named by Heroku (you can pass a specific App name but it has to be uniquely available.)

$ git status

-track your file changes and locate the untracked files detected by git

$ git add .

-add all files to git staging area so that you can push files to Heroky in next steps

$ git commit -m"give your wished comments for app pushing"

-this is to commit all your changes

$ git push heroku master

-finally pushing your apps and files to Heroku server wait a few minutes and let Heroku do all the heavy liftings for you. After successfully deploying:

$heroku open

-open your app url and view it in your browser.

Part 2: Add a custom domain to your Heroku hosted app

• Get a free domain

  1. Go to freenom to sign up an account
  2. Grab a free domain

• Visit your hosted webste in Heroku

  1. Log in Heroku and go to dashboard to visit the hosted app

  2. Add custom domains in your app’s setting page.

• Add Heroku DNS CNAME records to Freenom DNS console.

  1. Head over to Freenom DNS Console

  2. Point CNMAE records to Heroku-required records

• Await a few minutes to see your website live @ yourwebsite.com