Do the Unthinkable: Deploy your Node.js App onto Azure

Gabrielle Crevecoeur, Technical Evangelist at Microsoft, walks you through deploying a Node.js app onto Azure. Original post can be found here.

As a consistent learner, I went out and research a way to upload a Node.js web app onto the Azure cloud. And boy oh boy did everything look pretty complicated. But after looking through my findings and experimenting on my own, I realized it is actually pretty easy. So let’s jump right in and get you going.

Step 1: Log on to manage.windowsazure.com and either sign in or sign up!

Step 2: In the bottom left corner, you should see a BIG plus sign that says NEW. Press it.

Step 3: Once you press the New button, select the Compute option, then the Web App option and lastly the Quick Create option.

Step 4: Fill in the name of your new Azure site and choose the location for your app service plan. (Most likely your default setting will work just fine).

Step 5: Back in the homepage, choose your web app. A menu of several links should pop up and at the very bottom it should say: Set up deployment from source control

Step 6: You will now have several options to choose from, but in this blog… I will only be demonstrating two: Using the GitHub or Local Git Repository option.

Using GitHub: Simply press the GitHub option, log in to GitHub, authorize Azure to have access to your repository and choose the repository you would like to upload to the web app.

Using Local Git Repository: Choose the Local Git Repository Option and from there you will be directed to a page with directions to connect to the Azure portal through command line. (Keep in mind that we are creating a new app on Azure, so you can skip the step that says “or clone content that’s already on app” because… nothing is on your web app just yet).

When adding your remote Azure repository, you can copy and paste the link for your repo at the top of the directions.

Once you push your code to the Azure repository, it will automatically show up on your portal screen and you will see this image when it is done:

*Be sure that whenever you make changes on your local repository, you continue to push to your Azure repo!

Hope this helped you deploy your site on Azure! Got questions? Ask in the comments or DM on twitter @nowayshecodes