Highlights:

• Created products and plans in Stripe (using their Dashboard)
• Created my first Stripe promo code
• Made my website always secure with https

Next steps:

• Build server-side code to execute Stripe API (using Python)
• Add promo code functionality to website

Issues I came across:

• Question: Conceptually, I don’t understand how to send information from the Stripe HTML form to a Python file on my server.
• Solution: Use Flask. It’s a ‘micro-framework’ that builds a connection between python files and HTML files. It’s a bit involved and requires some training to use.
• Question: How do I create a Python file and store it on the server? Where do I store it on the server? I’m currently using Google App Engine.
• Solution: Using the Flask framework, you’ll create a main.py file. In that file, you’ll be ‘rendering’ (pulling up) various HTML files to load. When a user goes to your website, it’ll first refer to this main.py file, basically as the index in a sense. There’s a specific folder format that Flask uses.
• Question: Should it be in the same folder as index.html? What do I put in the html to connect to my Python file?
• Answer: No, all HTML files should go in a templates folder, as per the requirements of using Flask. Take a look at the Google App Engine tutorial on building a web application using Python.
• Issue: I’m trying to get my website to go through HTTPS. There are a few tutorials, but none of them are successful yet.
• Solution: Google App Engine automatically provides SSL certificates for the website. So, if I went to https://burningvpn.com, it will be secure.
  • However, if the average user just types in burningvpn.com (with no https in front of it), it wouldn’t automatically re-direct to the https version. Thanks to Patrick for helping point this out to me.
  • The solution was to build an automatic re-direct to https, so the website is always secure. We had to go to our app.yaml file (this file is, I think, the first point of contact when users go to burningvpn.com?). Here, it lists out where to find all of the relevant files needed for the website.
  • Notice under the url: /.* section (the homepage), I added a secure: always line. I think this did the trick? Now, users are always redirected to the HTTPS page.
  • I followed the tutorial here: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/securing-custom-domains-with-ssl

Things I learned:

• Stripe requires https to work.
• I successfully verified my domain address with Google App Engine. This required adding a few DNS entries.