Hosting your projects

This guide covers how to export your project and serve exported files over HTTP using widely-used web server software Nginx.

Export locally from the plugin

Open the TheGates export plugin in Godot.
Toggle Advanced settings.
Enable Export locally and click Export to local folder.

Plugin preview when exporting to a local folder

Make a note of the export output directory on your machine. You will upload its contents to your server in a later step.

Get a server and connect via SSH (very short)

You can use any VPS provider (for example: DigitalOcean Droplets, Hetzner Cloud, AWS Lightsail).
Learn SSH basics if needed: SSH tutorial.

Once the server is created, connect to it from your terminal:

ssh username@your_server_ip

Replace username and your_server_ip with your server’s values.

Install Nginx

You can install Nginx on various operating systems. Here’s how to install it on Ubuntu:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y nginx

Enable and start the service:

sudo systemctl enable nginx
sudo systemctl start nginx

If a firewall is enabled, allow HTTP (and HTTPS if you later add TLS):

# Ubuntu/Debian with ufw
sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full' || sudo ufw allow 80

Upload your exported files to the server

Create a directory to host your game files (adjust path as desired):

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/thegates/my-game
sudo chown -R "$USER":"$USER" /var/www/thegates/my-game

From your local machine (where you exported), upload the contents of the export folder to the server path above. You can use scp or rsync for this:

# From your local machine
# Replace /path/to/exported_folder with the folder created by the plugin
scp -r /path/to/exported_folder/* username@your_server_ip:/var/www/thegates/my-game/

# Or with rsync (resumes and only copies changes)
rsync -avz /path/to/exported_folder/ username@your_server_ip:/var/www/thegates/my-game/

Configure Nginx to serve the files

Create a new Nginx server block. On Debian/Ubuntu, place it in /etc/nginx/sites-available/thegates.conf and symlink to sites-enabled. On other distros, use /etc/nginx/conf.d/thegates.conf.

# Debian/Ubuntu style
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/thegates.conf

Example configuration suitable for TheGates exports:

server {
    listen 80;
    # Replace with your domain or keep _ for any host
    server_name _;

    # Path to the uploaded export files
    root /var/www/thegates/my-game;
    index index.html;

    # Serve files if present, otherwise 404
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    # Ensure correct MIME types for Godot/WebAssembly assets
    types {
        application/wasm  wasm;
        application/octet-stream  pck;
    }

    # Cache immutable static assets aggressively
    location ~* \.(?:wasm|pck|js|mjs|css|png|jpg|jpeg|webp|svg|gif|ico|ttf|otf|woff|woff2|mp3|ogg|mp4)$ {
        access_log off;
        add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=31536000, immutable";
    }

    # Keep HTML relatively fresh (don't cache for long)
    location = /index.html {
        add_header Cache-Control "no-cache";
    }
}

If you used the Debian/Ubuntu layout, enable the site and test:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/thegates.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/thegates.conf
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

For distros using conf.d:

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Verify in the browser

Open http://your_domain or http://your_server_ip in your browser. You should see the exported TheGates page load and assets download correctly (including .wasm and .pck files).

Next steps (optional)

Add HTTPS with Let’s Encrypt: Certbot Nginx guide.
Set a custom domain and DNS A record with your provider.
Automate uploads with CI and rsync.