[baby]

This was amazingly awesome because: I could teach people how to make a website, and how to have on the internet, in minutes.

Having said that, I haven't had that public folder in many many many many many years. So I'm surprised about this announce.

If anyone knows a quick way to let anyone do what I described above, please do tell.

[codazoda]

I use GitHub. I'm a developer, so maybe this is hard... They let you use their website to create a repo, add a file, and then in the settings specify that master is the source branch for GhPages so that it's available via the browser to the world at yourname.github.io/yourproject. You can even add a custom domain if you want.

[codazoda]

Here are the quick steps to do this.

Visit github.com

Create an account or login

Click the green "New repository" button

Give your website a name like "hello"

Check the box to Initialize this repository with a README

Click the Create repository button

Click the Create new file button

Name the file index.html

Enter <p>Hello World</p> in the body of the file

Click the Commit new file button

Click the Settings gear icon

Scroll down to GitHub Pages

Select master branch under Source

Click the Save button

There's now a link to username.github.io/hello under the GitHub Pages heading. You can now edit the index.html file or add css and js resources in the same way you just added the index file. Uploading files, such as images, is also supported. All without using Git.

[kowdermeister]

Great start :)

You can also drag and drop files from your desktop to your repo.

[baby]

Awesome, thanks for this!

[baby]

is github pages limited to jekyll? Or can you host any kind of html page? I thought about it as well but it adds a lot of complexity. Git is not easy to learn.

Oh wait, you're saying that you can do everything without using Git? That sounds good then.

[daenney]

You can host any kind of HTML. Jekyll is just there so you can check in Markdown and config and GitHub will generate the HTML for you whenever you commit. But it doesn't have to work that way. Plenty of static site generators also support GitHub Pages as a hosting method.

[scrollaway]

Archive.org lets you upload your own files, with metadata.

http://archive.org/

You have a bit more of a guarantee there. Bonus points if you fill in the copyright field correctly.

PDFs, audio files, video files etc will all be post-processed and rendered like you would expect them to be.

[baby]

Isn't that taking advantage of a service that is not to be used for this?

[scrollaway]

The Archive's philosophy is that they welcome any and all content. If you want your content to be on the internet, available for everyone to see and for the future to find, then by all means use the archive. Far more apt than a dropbox folder imho.

[djsumdog]

I don't see the harm so long as you're releasing your own content, either into the public domain or under a CC license.

[welanes]

Isn't Zeit now like that, and free?: https://zeit.co/now#pricing

[wging]

S3 buckets with the website feature enabled, but you have to pay for usage and I don't know of a way to emulate Dropbox's local filesystem integration with S3... at least not one that's accessible for nontechnical users.

[baby]

That's already complicated + not free.

[bigiain]

That's kinda the problem - why _should_ this be free?

If it matters at all to you, you can host a huge amount for static website content for single digit dollars per year on S3.

If it's not worth that much to you, who in their right mind will build a service based on providing that to you at your price point? And if they _have_ a service where the marginal cost of you not-caring-enough-to-pay makes little difference, you should - as this Dropbox change demonstrates - fully expect that "feature" to go away when the costs or support (or legal problems) get noticed.

[the_af]

It's not that it should be free. It's just that it used to be.

Unfortunately, I don't think that "if it matters so much to you, you can pay $X" is a useful position. More helpful would be "beware free services that cause vendor lock-in and may stop being free at any time".

Do you use a free Gmail account? If so, how important is it for you?

[accordionclown]

and not only did it used to be free, but when they took it away, they refused to give people an option to pay for it. they really botched an opportunity to get people to upgrade. further, they hurt their integrity in the process, and their integrity is one of their most important assets. so, overall, it was a tremendously bad mistake. it's also puzzling they never gave any credible explanation for it. in the meantime, there are at least two alternatives, namely htmldrop.com and updog.co; both are new, and thus who knows how long they will last, but if you need something now, you have options.

[bigiain]

So just like Google Wave/Buzz/Knol/Answers/every-other-20%-time-project-that-wasn't-email-maps-or-ads?

I'm with you on the outrage, just perhaps a bit more pragmatic about the inevitability. (And I'm a paying customer too. Or at least will be until my current billing cycle ends...)

[baby]

> why _should_ this be free?

Because I'm trying to teach someone how to make a simple webpage and publish it on the internet. If in this workflow you have to get your credit card out you're doing it wrong.

[rodgerd]

OneDrive has public folders, although the URLs are opaque.

[013a]

surge.sh is a great solution.

[corny]

Along the same lines: https://www.netlify.com

[LeoPanthera]

Well this isn't suitable for "normal" users but I use SyncThing to sync a folder on my computer to a server running Apache.

[baby]

What is the server running Apache? :)

[LeoPanthera]

It's a Digital Ocean droplet.

[baby]

Yep, not really the easy or free thing to setup when learning how to make a simple webpage.

[rz2k]

Does the public folder of a keybase.io account work?

[baby]

not sure, but keybase is invite only to begin with.