Dropbox is a feature-full service and now is not limited to just sharing files. All you need to do is to just think about the endless possibilities and things you can do with Dropbox. One more hidden gem or feature is that you can also host a website using Dropbox. The website can be developed by using HTML, CSS and Javascript. PHP is not supported though.
Hosting a Website on Dropbox: Step by step process
Firstly, you’ll need to have Dropbox installed. If you don’t have it, then go ahead and download Dropbox.
Navigate to the installed Dropbox public folder, and create a new folder and name it anything e.g. site. Now place all the HTML, CSS, images and Javascript in this folder.
Interlinking between all these elements is also possible. Just right click the file name, hover over to Dropbox menu and click on Copy public link. The link will be copied to the clipboard and you can paste this link anywhere you wish (even in the HTML website). E.g. let’s say you want to embed an image named as “cdn.jpg” in the HTML. Firstly get the public link of this image and paste it in the HTML file (by using proper img src tag). Same way, any other files like CSS and Javascripts can also be embedded in the website.
Finally when the site is completely developed, you can right click on that HTML file and copy its public link. Now send this link to your friends or bookmark it – this is your new online home and you’ve just hosted the site on Dropbox. Unlike traditional hosting, we don’t need to create a HTML file and name it as index.html. You can name this HTML file anything and get its link.
Want to test the site? No problem, just navigate to this link on any web browser and you will see live website the way you have developed.
How to get clean looking Dropbox public link
As you may have noticed by now that the link is not looking clean to the eyes, and is much hard to remember. Normally websites have easy to remember URL. But in this case, this is not so. The solution is to use a link shortener like bit.ly or Google’s goo.gl. Go to any of these URL shorteners and enter the public link URL there and then you will get the short URL which is easy to remember. And what’s more, if you are using bit.ly then you can customize the URL and also track how many visitors you get from that link. Cool, isn’t.
Those who want to host static websites can get benefit by using this method. Plus updating/editing the website is a piece of cake. No need to use any FTP client or cPanel file manager. Just copy and paste the file to your Dropbox public folder and your file is uploaded on the server. Isn’t this called – hosting website the easy and simplest ever possible way.
Sammy says
Wow..I never thought that Dropbox can even be used to host website.