How To Use Dropbox With A Domain

If you have a dropbox account that should have a “Public” folder which is used to store documents, images, clips, movies or any other important files you wish to share.

How to create a personalized Dropbox URL ?

Image Credit : Dropbox

Here in the below example, we can see that there is one user ID and that would be common for that account holder/user. With this ID we can map any specific location or domain name. It can be found in the download link itself which will promote itself.

In this pattern the Dropbox name looks small and easy to remember.

Mapping Dropbox to the domain

1. For hosting your own domain with Apache service, follow the below steps :Open cPanel and setup a new sub-domain like - e.g. files.poketors.com. It will create a directory with the same name.

Now get into the server and create a new file called .htaccess in the above directory. Here you need to replace XXX with your Dropbox ID.

1: <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

2: RewriteEngine on

3: RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://dl.dropbox.com/u/XXX/$1 [L,QSA]

4: </IfModule>

We have done. You can share your Dropbox URL but before that you must replace dl.dropbox.com/u/ID with your web address like, files.poketors.com and people will be able to download your files as before.

2. In case no web host is there and you are using Google App Engine to have custom Dropbox URLs then follow the below steps.

You can download the source code from code.google.com and make the following changes in the code.

- You should replace XXX in mirror.py with your Dropbox user number.

- You should replace APPNAME in appl.yaml with some unique name.

In case you want to deploy the above through the Google App Engine launcher. Then you can opt for that too.

3. In case you have a configured domain with Google Apps, you may use your Dropbox redirection app on that domain otherwise your Dropbox URLs will look like appname.appspot.com and it will be without your Dropbox ID.

You have an option to use CNAME addresses to map Dropbox URLs to any sub-domain.