How to Host a Website for Free on Google Drive

There are so many free hosting services which allow you to host your files free of cost into the cloud. But what if Google itself provide you such service. Yes Google is providing free webhosting service using Google drive. You can host a website for free on Google Drive. You can host any type of file like HTML, JAVASCRIPT files and CSS style sheets to your drive and share your web URL with others.

What is Google Drive?

Google Drive is a free of cost service which allow you to store your files as well as synchronize you files into the cloud. Google drive provide each user his free 5 GB of cloud storage which is available for each user for his file uploading, sharing and collaborate editing.If you are new to Google Drive do check Getting Started Guide with Google Drive.

• Also Read: How to Install Google Drive in PC/Computer

What can you do using Google Drive hosting?

Using Google drive hosting you can host your HTML files, JavaScript files and CSS files. You can also put media files like images on cloud and use them in your webpage.
While designing or coding your HTML, any one can put relative path of their image files or CSS style sheets. I.e. if you put your image file in same folder as your HTML file than you can use image in code such as:

Background-image: URL (background.png);

What you can’t do using Google Drive hosting :

Server pages like PHP, JSP are not yet supported. So you can’t do server side scripting as we can do in normal hosting.
Also you can’t do custom domain mapping in Google drive as Google don’t support this service till now. Also you won’t get any option in setting to set subdomain and DNS configuration.
SQL database is also not available. So if you planning to launch a website having user registration and login properties than you need to change your decision or you have to use Google forms and excel spread sheets as your data source.

Step Wise Explanation to host a website on Google Drive

So now you are aware that what is Google Drive and what are its limitations if are going for hosting website on Google Drive. Let’s now go for step wise explanation of hosting a website using Google Drive hosting for free.

• Create your file folder containing all your HTML files and related CSS, JavaScript and media files.
• Sign in to your Google Drive Account here  https://drive.google.com
• You can find upload button there for uploading file and folders to your Google Drive.

• Click that and upload complete folder at once (you can go for file option also and upload each file separately). After clicking upload button a file window will be pop up where you can select your folder containing your files from your desktop.

• After the folder is selected, on clicking ok a new dialogue box appear asking you about uploading setting. Make sure here the both check boxes should be unchecked. If you check the first check box than your HTML file will converted to Google Drive format and it won’t work as Webpage.

• Click on start upload and wait for uploading files and folders
• Make folder and all files available to public by right clicking the folder and navigate to share option. This step is important as if you don’t make your files public your files will not be available for preview that means no one other than you can see your files.

• Save the changes and click done button.
• Now open your folder and open your HTML file in Google Drive (You can double click your file and can locate open button on the right down corner of your screen).
• File will be open in new tab where easily you can find a preview button. Click on preview button, your webpage will be open.

• You can share this link among others now. Congratulation you just hosted a website using Google Drive for free.

Click Here for a Sample Page on Google Drive

Some Check List to avoid Errors

• Make sure you don’t forget to uncheck upload option check boxes. Which will ask you to convert your file in Google Drive file format. No need to convert file in Google Drive file format.

• Don’t forget to make your folder and files public by clicking on share button.

• Don’t upload files with same name in a same folder. If you create two files with same name “Hello.html” in same folder, none of them will open or work.

• Only 5 GB of data is allowed by Google as a free web space. So try to use that in optimized way. Also make sure that your web folder doesn’t exceed this limit of 5 GB. Beyond that limit you have to pay to Google for extra space.

So this is how you can host a website on Google drive for free. Try it and make your own website today.

About Author:Hello I am Himanshu Kumar Das, I am a Software Developer and part time Blogger.I used to Blog on Geek House and currently written an article on Mozilla Firefox OS