Configuring app.yaml for static websites

In case you want to publish a static website on Google App Engine (http://appengine.google.com/) then the following configuration can be used (app.yaml):

application: appname
version: 1
api_version: 1
runtime: python

handlers:
- url: /(.*)
  static_files: static/\1
  upload: static/(.*)

This assumes the following:

1) The application name is appname (change it to your registered application name on appengine.google.com)
2) All static pages are under the static directory (appname/static)

This works fine, but any request to http://appname.appspot.com/ (or another domain in case you are using Google Apps) will not automatically be redirected to http://appname.appspot.com/index.htm (or index.html). In case you want such a behavior, create a python script (like main.py) under the application directory (appname/) with the following content:

import cgi

from google.appengine.ext import webapp
from google.appengine.ext.webapp.util import run_wsgi_app

class MainPage(webapp.RequestHandler):
  def get(self):
    self.redirect('/index.htm')

application = webapp.WSGIApplication(
                                     [('/', MainPage)],
                                     debug=True)

def main():
  run_wsgi_app(application)

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

and change the app.yaml to:

application: appname
version: 1
api_version: 1
runtime: python

handlers:
- url: /
  script: main.py

- url: /(.*)
  static_files: static/\1
  upload: static/(.*)