Freenom and GCP — hosting a static website on GCP Cloud Storage using DNS “A” Record, The missing parts.

Background: While working on a new application, I encountered an issue with Freenom and GCP cloud storage based static website hosting. Freenom (Register a free domain) provides domain names for free and it was sufficient for this demo app. The application was hosted at a subdomain (say, demo-app.somedomain.tk) and it was not necessary to have a website at the main domain (somedomain.tk).

Turns out, according to the policy of Freenom, the review team checks if a website is accessible at the main domain and if it is not available then the domain name would be deregistered. The demo app was supposed to be available for a few more weeks and I did not want to lose this domain. The easiest way would be to move the app from subdomain to the main domain. But wait, where’s the fun and challenge in that? So my idea was to connect the main domain to some dummy static website hosted on GCP Cloud storage.

The documentation is available (Hosting a static website), it is pretty detailed, just follow it through and you should have a static website in no time which can be reached at somedomain.tk. pretty simple and easy right? Let’s see.

Problem: The GCP guide to host a static website recommends creating a CNAME record for…