Dropbox is one of the most useful tools I found this year. Another one is Google Reader. Seriously I didn’t know it can do wonders. Every time I Google something I come up some Dropbox news, so here is my contribution.
For people who are not aware Dropbox, it is a Web-based file hosting service that uses cloud computing to enable users to store and share files and folders with others across the Internet using file synchronization.
1. Use As Content Delivery Network (CDN)
You can improve the loading speed of your site by using a CDN to host your website’s static content like images, CSS and JS Files. A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a system of computers containing copies of data, placed at various points in a network so as to maximize bandwidth for access to the data from clients throughout the network. [via Wikipedia]
With the help of Dropbox CDN WordPress plugin you can use your Dropbox ‘Public’ folder as a free Content Delivery Network (CDN). This plugin allows you to upload your themes CSS, JavaScript, and Images into your Dropbox ‘Public’ folder and server these files from the Dropbox network, reducing the bandwidth of your server and allowing users to load your site faster.
Tutorial: Use Dropbox as a CDN for your WordPress Files
2. Backup Your WordPress Blog
WordPress Backups is one of the recommended basic security tips for your blog.
wp Time Machine WordPress plugin creates an archive of all your WordPress Data & Files and then stores them on Dropbox, Amazon’s S3, or your FTP host. It can perform an automatic backup of your WordPress MySQL database, themes, plug-ins and all the other files and images that you may upload to your WordPress folder. Just enter your Dropbox credentials and hit the Generate Archive button. Bingo!
Tutorial: Backup your WordPress Blog to Dropbox
3. Use With Your Web Domain
Every Dropbox account comes with a useful ‘Public’ folder. You can use that folder to host documents, images, and other stuff that you want to share with everyone. By personalizing the default Dropbox URL, you can indirectly promote your brand, track individual file downloads, and make it look less complex.
Default Dropbox URL :
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/ID/folder/hbbdemo.txt
Personalized URL :
http://files.hellboundbloggers.com/folder/hbbdemo.txt
Tutorial: Use Dropbox with your own Web Domain
4. Make Your Own Website
Dropbox is an easy way to create a quick website without the need for a server. You can easily get a hosting provider for your blog/website. You are limited to client-side scripts and HTML since Dropbox cannot run any server side stuff.
- Create a folder in your Public folder for your website.
- Put your entire website under this folder.
- Right click on the homepage of your website (usually something like home.htm or index.html) and get the public URL for it.
5. Control Your Home Web Server
You can simply add a vHost to your web server and point it to a folder inside your Dropbox home and voila! You have complete control over the content you’re hosting!
The basic idea behind this is to use vHosts to have the website contents in the Dropbox folder. The post explains how to do this for Tomcat or Apache. It’s also useful with IIS and Visual Studio. Simply add a symlink of your wwwroot to “My Dropbox” and you have your website on the net to control. When making web application in Visual Studio, simple ‘Public’ the project to the folder inside the wwwroot inside “My Dropbox” and your website updates, no matter where you are working at.
Tutorial: Controlling Your Home Web Server Content
6. Automatic & Free Web Publishing Solution
Ever wondered that you can use the very same Dropbox as an automatic Web Publishing Solution (as an alternative to SVN and other technologies). It only takes three steps in order to get your Dropbox running as a Web Publishing solution. However, you won’t be able to do so if you don’t have full access to the server.
- Installing Dropbox on the server
- Sharing data between multiple Dropbox accounts
- Configuring the webserver
- Running Dropbox as a service
Tutorial: Using Dropbox as an automatic and free Web Publishing solution
7. Create Your Personal Wiki
With TiddlyWiki and Dropbox you can set up your own wiki that is easy to use and available from anything with a web browser.
TiddlyWiki is extremely flexible and can accommodate many needs with some of the variations available. Before you pay for another note taking program, or if you are unhappy with the one you currently have downloaded TiddlyWiki for free and see how it can suit your needs.
Tutorial: Build Your Own Personal Wiki Accessible from Any PC
Do you know any other cool use of Dropbox that could help a blogger or webmaster? Kindly share them in the comments!
This seems like a crazy complex way to make something do things it wasn’t intended to do. Isn’t dropbox used to store files? Hosting a simple website on it seems like quite a stretch. Just seems like your asking for dropbox to put more limits on stuff if we keep taking advantage of their service.
I am also using Dropbox as a CDN service. Frankly, It makes me happy. Guys,who can't afford CDN. I recommend to use Dropbox CDN. Beside this, to run some HTML file dropbox is my best choice.
Hey, I use dropbox with Mnemosyne to automatically sync all my data on my desktop, laptop and iphone :)It's especially useful for learning GRE words on the go.
-Abhigyan
India
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This is great and can have many uses 🙂
Dropbox working better than wp-minify.
thanx Pradeep for share it 🙂
TiddlyWiki is totally new to me !! generally i use dropbox for storing backup’s .
Wow..so many uses. I knew abt the CDN usage. Backup was something new to me..gonna try it out.
Very informative about dropbox, I’m just ignore this tool…thanks for remembering…
Pradeep – It's funny I came across your post on using Dropbox because I just started learning about Dropbox and how to use it a couple of days ago. I'm interested in using it as a CDN to improve my site's loading speed, but I wasn't aware you could use it for all these different things.
Now I'm also interested in using Dropbox to backup some of my wordpress blogs. Thanks for the link to the wp Time Machine plugin and the tutorial. I will give Dropbox a try on one of my newer sites and see how it goes.
I seriously had no idea that these things were possible, dropbox as a cdn, i must implement it soon to make my blog load faster.
First time I hear about Dropbox but it sure sound like a great tool. Hope I can use it without getting confused about all the techie things.
I am impressed with the first one. Anybody tried?
Yea Jose, using Dropbox as a CDN is marvelous. I haven’t tried it, but some of my clients implemented it on their blogs & they said they can notice some improvement in loading speeds. 🙂
Nice Collection !!!
Can we trust Drop Box?
After Ma.gnolia Major Data Loss in 2009 and Yahoo announced it doesn’t like Delicious anymore, I trust only Google and Microsoft services.
Seriously I won’t be able to answer that question by touching my heart, but still I can assure you!
Dropbox is tremendously improving, updating their features now and then. I think it will last forever. 🙂
I agree but dropbox is a growing service and has been a big hit since its creation.
ATM i use Gmail driver client on my laptop 🙂
regards
shaq
You trust Microsoft services?! 🙂
Wow, you can really be creative with Dropbox! So many uses… looks like I must really check this service out!
Dropbox can be used as a CDN, but there are bandwidth limitations. If you are a free dropbox user all you get is a 10GB bandwidth cap and paid users get a 250GB Bandwidth. 🙂
I think we can use DropBox as the backup for wordpress blog. It will help us to save very important data from losing. Other think that dropbox can help is in making your own website. That is pretty cool.
thanks for sharing this useful post didn’t know that it can be used in creating a site
Excellent post Pradeep…..really useful info…
very much informational post Pradeep..Thank you very much …
m using the Dropbox as a CDN and really i feel that site loading speed increases tremendously.