Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
For some time, I have been using a little trick with Dropbox so that small personal web pages can be served on the Internet. By creating a .html file in your Dropbox-synced folder the sync process uploads the file to the Dropbox server, and then getting a share link for it produces a URL of the form www.dropbox.com/some-random-string/filename.html?dl=0. The exploit is that by changing the "www" to "dl" and ditching the "?dl=0" (as can be observed from the actual download link when going to the www page), the file becomes renderable in a normal web browser as a normal web page.
I use this to provide myself with a browser home page that links to all my regular web sites (instead of having to maintain multiple Favourites in all the browsers I might use), so the random (but fixed) URL doesn't matter as long as I can set my browsers' home URLs to it.
However, I also use the exploit to provide shared content to small groups of associates, such as a rota page for a club committee. In this case, I use tiny.cc to create a more meaningful URL and redirect it to the Dropbox content.
This all works great, as long as you don't exceed your traffic allowance and get your account frozen for a period!
The trouble is: Dropbox have now discovered the exploit (or knew about it and have now decided to act):
Fair enough, it is an exploit and they could have pulled the plug without warning - at least they've told me. Presumably other people were abusing it far more than me.
I assume they can detect when a browser is trying to render a web page rather than simply download it (I'm not sure how), or they might change the method for downloading a file using the shared link so that substituting "dl" no longer works. Wait and see on that one.
Anybody got a good idea for (free) hosting of limited resources, preferably with an easy upload/update mechanism (the Dropbox syncing is great, FTP is going to be less convenient I think)? A few free web hosts that I have looked at seem to have problems with users complaining accounts get suspended for no apparent reason (and free accounts have no access to support).
I use this to provide myself with a browser home page that links to all my regular web sites (instead of having to maintain multiple Favourites in all the browsers I might use), so the random (but fixed) URL doesn't matter as long as I can set my browsers' home URLs to it.
However, I also use the exploit to provide shared content to small groups of associates, such as a rota page for a club committee. In this case, I use tiny.cc to create a more meaningful URL and redirect it to the Dropbox content.
This all works great, as long as you don't exceed your traffic allowance and get your account frozen for a period!
The trouble is: Dropbox have now discovered the exploit (or knew about it and have now decided to act):
Fair enough, it is an exploit and they could have pulled the plug without warning - at least they've told me. Presumably other people were abusing it far more than me.
I assume they can detect when a browser is trying to render a web page rather than simply download it (I'm not sure how), or they might change the method for downloading a file using the shared link so that substituting "dl" no longer works. Wait and see on that one.
Anybody got a good idea for (free) hosting of limited resources, preferably with an easy upload/update mechanism (the Dropbox syncing is great, FTP is going to be less convenient I think)? A few free web hosts that I have looked at seem to have problems with users complaining accounts get suspended for no apparent reason (and free accounts have no access to support).
