Using Dropbox as a Host for Static Websites.

http://andothernoise.blogspot.com/2009/05/using-dropbox-as-host-for-static.html

by alexandros • 17 years ago

28 16 17 years ago

andothernoise.blogspot.com

chaosmachine• 17 years ago

I might be wrong, but this probably violates the terms of service if you're serving pages to more than a few visitors.

teej• 17 years ago

Yeah, using DropBox as a faux-CDN is a bad idea. To quote their terms:

> By placing Your Files in your public folder, you hereby grant all other Dropbox users and the public a non-exclusive, non-commercial, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, perpetual and irrevocable right and license to use and exploit Your Files in your public folder

But having your DropBox "repository" as your web root seems pretty slick.

chops• 17 years ago

While that sounds perfectly reasonable to me, I wonder if it's that enforceable? That sounds like the public domain to me. Can a company declare "by doing X on our system, you hereby release your IP into the public domain?"

kierank• 17 years ago

I'm guessing (as with Amazon S3) it's not possible to host a root file - hence http://dl.dropbox.com/xxxx/whatever won't work.

buugs• 17 years ago

I don't know if they still do this but in the past dropbox did close down public transfers for people who overused or misused it (probably more a bandwidth issue such as sharing large videos).

albertni• 17 years ago

I don't want to get into the details (for obvious reasons) but we are quite lenient about public link usage! We're mostly interested in cutting off the potentially expensive long tail, which can get very, very long.

umbrae• 17 years ago

For a less TOS breaking solution, you could set up a dropbox client on your server and let it refresh your web content automatically. You're hosting it yourself, but you still get the benefit of no file transferring necessary.

zacharypinter• 17 years ago

I set my homepage to TiddlyWiki that's stored on Dropbox via a file:// link. The two are a fairly powerful and convenient combo.

artlogic• 17 years ago

This isn't really news:

http://wiki.getdropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/HostWebsites

Dropbox itself has been suggesting you do this since at least mid-march, if not earlier. I wouldn't use it for your business' website, but it would probably be great for sharing information/photos/videos amongst friends.

A more interesting idea is mentioned here:

http://wiki.getdropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/WebPublishingSoluti...

This basically suggests using Dropbox to manage publishing and basic version control of a web application's source code. I will definitely be using this as soon as selective synching is enabled (hopefully soon - hint hint).

Using Dropbox as a Host for Static Websites.

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