
Dropbox-Hosted Websites - joeblau
http://brace.io/
======
padseeker
How is this different than backlift -
[https://www.backlift.com](https://www.backlift.com) is already doing the same
thing.

~~~
ricardobeat
Or [http://droppages.com/](http://droppages.com/) or
[http://www.site44.com/](http://www.site44.com/) or
[http://www.kissr.com/](http://www.kissr.com/)

~~~
anotherwise
[http://pancake.io](http://pancake.io) as well.

~~~
tonydewan
...and [http://paperplane.io](http://paperplane.io)

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UVB-76
The demo video talks about files being copied to a 'network of servers' to
provide load balancing, so does this tool really produce 'Dropbox hosted'
websites, or does it just use Dropbox as a mechanism for transferring files
between the user and what amounts to a web host?

If it's the latter, why even bother with Dropbox as a middle man?

~~~
Shank
It looks like the main use of Dropbox is just as a mechanism to upload to
their service. To be fair, this is a lot easier for an end user to deal with
than something like FTP, SFTP, and especially git.

~~~
est
This.

Nothing is more easier than just drag n' drop few files into a folder.

There are tons of static-generators in Ruby/Python/Nodejs/whatever, but none
has the simplicity of Dropbox publishing.

Think of it, dropbox as a versioned storage for Markdown source files, third
party platform to publish full-fledged rendered HTML with analytics, sitemap,
feeds, mobile views, pdf/json/xml formats, etc. This _is_ how should cloud
platforms work.

Need collaboration or external contributors? Just invite your friends on
Dropbox!

~~~
mistercow
In theory, gvfs with FTP is that convenient. The problem is that it's a
little, shall we say... "quirky".

~~~
est
You can't gvfs in iOS/Android/Windows/OS X

And FTP port is not as ubiquitous as 80/443

Your FTP server availability is always worse than Dropbox's EC2 cloud.

FTP has account/mask/chmod/filename encoding problems

You have to backup your data on server and resolve file name conflicts in some
odd way.

The list goes on.

------
hardwaresofton
Great idea and awesome landing page -- sat through the introductory video and
was really impressed with the simplicity and ease of the idea.

Also - would you like to say anything about PHP/scripting support? I saw some
PHP files in the folder that was copied during the demo vid, was wondering
about support for that

~~~
why-el
Given that they said they are pushing your files to their servers for load
balancing, they will mostly likely add support for dynamic stuff.

------
mmahemoff
Surely Dropbox itself will offer metered web hosting from DB folders soon
enough. Google Drive already touts itself as a web host, despite not
publishing official limits.

~~~
troymc
Indeed. Amazon S3 has had this capability for some time.

Maybe Dropbox will just acquire the one that becomes most popular? Let the
market pick a winner, then buy it!

------
seldo
So there are a handful of other services doing this same basic concept (see
other comment), and none of them seem to have a story about how this scales
past a single developer: sure, you can share the Dropbox folder and all work
in the same place, but on something like a website with common CSS files and
other centralized assets it seems like that would rapidly become unmanageable.

~~~
dbla
I think the market for these types of services is not multi-person dev teams.
Instead, this is for your solo freelancer who doesn't want to deal with the
hassle of hosting and where git is overkill.

~~~
jeremydw
Shameless plug: Solving high-quality web site production (for a multi-person
dev team, including non-developer personas such as designers, content writers,
reviewers, translators, etc.) is actually part of a new project I'm working on
([http://grow.io](http://grow.io)). If you (or any other reader) has an
immediate need for this type of product/app, I'd love to talk to you to learn
more about your requirements (and share more about my project).

~~~
Dwolb
My problem might only be my current company, but large scale systems
development tools are a mess. There isn't a better method than Office to track
large sets of requirements, timing, and assets for a good view of project
status.

I guess what I'm saying is I wish someone tackled the organizational issue for
product management of large systems in my domain (encompasses software,
hardware, mechanical) other than IBM.

------
annyway
Does anyone know what API call they are using to create the auto-sync
relationship?

From my review of the Dropbox API they seem to support this push in their iOS
and Android SDKs but for web-based SDK it appears you can only poll their API
for changes. But clearly there's an event-based push going on here. Any
thoughts?

------
kazagistar
So, it saves you the extra click to upload via SFTP? I really am not sure I
get the point. Are they targeting people who are confused and befuddled by
normal file synchronization?

~~~
StavrosK
That's not very convenient, even for power users. My blog runs on a custom CMS
I wrote, yet it was enough of a pain that I eventually added Dropbox
integration. This setup has the added advantage that all the state is always
in Dropbox, backed up, and I can set up as many read-only mirrors that
autosync as I want:

[http://www.stavros.io/posts/this-blog-is-dropbox-
enabled/](http://www.stavros.io/posts/this-blog-is-dropbox-enabled/)

[http://mirror.stavros.io/posts/this-blog-is-dropbox-
enabled/](http://mirror.stavros.io/posts/this-blog-is-dropbox-enabled/)

~~~
sebastianavina
just mount an ssh folder on your local machine...

~~~
StavrosK
This is a dynamic CMS, the content is markdown files, and it's hosted on GAE.
Plus, I don't like the latency SSH has when saving.

------
brent_noorda
I'm totally confused (once again something on HN makes me feel like an idiot).
Doesn't Dropbox already give everyone free hosting? Dropbox has been hosting
my website, on their dime, for quite a while already
([http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41075/brentnoorda/index.h...](http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41075/brentnoorda/index.html)).
So, um... What?

~~~
corobo
Just a quick heads up using Dropbox as web hosting - Google and the rest won't
ever index your site as the domain has a deny-all robots.txt

[http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/robots.txt](http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/robots.txt)

~~~
brent_noorda
I hadn't thought about the indexing problem. So I moved all my pages to
github.io, which google does index. Thanks.

------
benatkin
> Brace is the new way to host websites

This website needs to get over itself before I'll pay any attention to it.

~~~
rfnslyr
You were _this_ offended by a cheap little marketing quote? What do you
suggest?

 _Brace is kinda like 50~ other services, we just have a nice UI and are
easier to understand. Check it out!_

~~~
benatkin
No, not offended. I just assumed there was pomposity involved in the decision
to use this quote.

------
nir
Anyone has any experience reaching quota limits on Dropbox, GH-Pages etc?
Would you feel comfortable hosting a very high traffic site (or even a smaller
site that gets Reddited occasionally) there?

~~~
ovechtrick
Looks like they don't host it on dropbox. They use dropbox like an FTP
replacement.

~~~
nir
got it. thanks!

------
jwcrux
Can't you do the same thing with Github pages?

~~~
joshbert
Yes, you can. The thing is that Github is still intimidating for a lot of
people. They can use this as a simpler alternative.

~~~
tarr11
If someone put a simple UI in front of github pages, I think they'd have a
winner...

~~~
babuskov
It's been something like 2 years of me saying that. I even considered starting
my own github competitor just do have this single feature as a difference...
but somehow I feel it wouldn't be enough for people to switch.

~~~
tarr11
I don't think you could get people to switch. But if you build a familiar UI,
that publishes to github, I'd use it.

------
johnjelinek
Why would I use this and not GitHub Pages?

~~~
why-el
Not everyone is familiar with/wants to set up git or github for mac. Remember
that git users are a tiny minority among those who have or want a static site.

------
nickthemagicman
Not sure what the advantage of this is. I guess just simplicity and easy DNS
setup?

------
bby
The value add on this doesn't seem very high... it can be useful in limited
circumstances.

~~~
frozenport
I agree.

Scenarios where you need extremely simplified website access are unlikely to
be those where you need well distributed hosting.

