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February 7, 2013

Google Drive Site Hosting

You can now create sites in Google Drive, but it's just a nice trick, not a full-fledged feature. To get started, create a new folder, right-click the folder and use the "share" feature to make the folder public. All the files of the site you want to create will be placed inside this folder.

Unfortunately, you can't create the HTML, JS and CSS files in Google Drive using the default apps, so you need install a third-party app like Drive Notepad, Neutron Drive or create these files using a native text editor or HTML editor. Make sure you have all the required files, including a file named index.html. When you upload the files to the folder you've just created, disable the conversion option.

Click the index.html file and then click the "Preview" button to see a live version of your homepage. The files are hosted at googledrive.com and have long URLs you can't customize. Here's an example.


Another downside is that you can create multiple files that have the same name, so a new version of the index.html file doesn't replace the existing file, but it adds a new file. You can always use the "manage revisions" option, but it would be nice have a traditional folder feature. For now, it's a good idea to use the Google Sync apps.

{ Thanks, Michael. }

14 comments:

  1. Thanks Alex, very interesting.

    A couple of questions.

    1) Does Google Drive operate like a CDN so that the files are served from the nearest Geo-Location?

    2) Is there any limit on Bandwidth and/or concurrent usage? eg Could a popular site utilize this to host CSS/JS files without getting blocked etc

    Cheers
    Andy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Since the pages are served by Google, they obviously use Google's infrastructure and content delivery network. Like any other Google Docs/Drive file, there is an unpublished bandwidth limit, so you shouldn't use it for pages that could generate millions of views a day.

      Delete
  2. It seems every service Google provides free hosting...xiixixixi
    good good :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have been using dropbox's flawless hosting since ages

    ReplyDelete
  4. Can i upload image files or video file?

    Please share proper steps of hosting.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You can edit HTML files in Google Drive using ShiftEdit too. And you can get a free custom short URL for your Google Drive website using GDrives!

    ReplyDelete
  6. You can generate the HTML using Google Apps Script which can mean the file can be generated from templates using Google account data. So you can build a sort of asynchronous dashboard on any Google Apps - or any other web service with an API.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Why not just use sites.google.com?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Too bad it's not possible to use custom domain... Google sites does, but it has a lot of limitations, like 5Mb file size upload or the fact that you can't call external javascript or css files. When will google offer REAL hosting? At a nice price, it would be great...

    ReplyDelete
  9. It seems every service Google provides free hosting

    ReplyDelete
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