Web Hosting / Public HTTP Access

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Did you know that every folder in your Files.com site can be a powerful web server? Well, they can!

Let's start with creating a new folder. And let's call it web server test.

Right now, this folder is just a regular folder like any other on your Files.com site. I can click into it, perform file actions, and see my folder settings.

We're going to use a folder setting to turn this folder into its own web server.

One of the things we need decide is what we want to serve via the web. Whatever you put into this folder is going to be publicly available just like any web server you'd use to serve static information.

I've got an index file here, and I've got an interior folder that's going to hold other files that this page is going to use as it renders: CSS and JavaScript files.

To see how we turn this folder into a web server, let's open up our folder settings. Scroll down until we see Publicly Serve (web hosting). This is the setting we want to use. Turning this folder into a web server is as simple as checking this box.

We're not going to require a password for now, but you can if you want.

If you needed to require a password, you would check the box to require a password and then enter a username and password that visitors would have to enter if they wanted to access this folder with a web browser.

The next thing we need to decide is what we want to add to this URL so that it functions as a standard web address. This part of the URL is automatically generated, because it's associated with my site. So, we're going to say, web folder test. And now we're going to copy this to the clipboard, because we're going to use this shortly here. Now we save this setting.

This looks like a normal folder here just like any other, but we're going to go over to a separate browser now. Now we're in Safari, And I'm going to paste that web address into the address bar here and Enter.

Let's see what we get.

This is the index file that I uploaded, and you can see that this allows you to use CSS and JavaScript, which is what is creating this fancy movement here. Essentially, you can serve anything in your web server folder that a standard web server will serve.

You can use your web server folder much like a content delivery network, where you store images and files that you want to embed in or make available via another website.

You can also use this as its own website depending on your needs.

You're not able to execute server side scripts like .NET or PHP, but you can serve JavaScript files and anything that you would typically serve statically.

You can have 1000s of folders in your site, and you can give each one its own unique address as a web server. Each one can have its own settings in addition to your web server settings.

If you have any questions, please feel free to Contact Us or give us a call at 1-800-286-8372.