So, you've finished building up the UI for your React project and you want to host it up on a remote machine. In this article, we'll be using Google Cloud Platform to host our sample React website.

Step 1: SSH into your virtual private server

Build your React website using npm build and upload the code to your preferred git repository.

Step 2: SSH into your virtual private server

Log in to your virtual private server

For Unix-like devices (Mac OS or Linux)ssh <username>@<computer name or IP address>

For example

ssh Tonye@computer

or

ssh Tonye@127.0.0.1

Step 3: Install Apache

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install apache2 -y

At this point, if you go to your IP address, you should be able to see Apache2 Debian Default Page.

Step 4: Install git and clone your React Project

Before cloning the React project, you'll need to have git installed

sudo apt-get install git

You can then clone your repo into your virtual machine.

sudo git clone <git repository>

Step 5: Copy the React build into the web server directory

Copy all the content of the build folder into the web server directory.

sudo cp -r ./<react repository folder>/build/* /var/www/html/

For sanity check, you can confirm the content of your web server directory to be sure you copied all the contents of your build folder

ls /var/www/html/

With that done, you can check your IP to see your React project live.