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Mar 9th, 2010
3:34 am
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Dropbox custom domain

If you don’t already use Dropbox, you should.

Besides keeping your files backed up and computers in sync, it also allows you to share files with others. You’ll never cringe at attaching huge files to emails ever again. However the links to these shared files can look kind of cryptic and unprofessional. If you’re sharing files with clients, http://dl.dropbox.com/u/918273645/file.zip just doesn’t cut it.

I decided to remap these urls to something a little more legible, professional, and just incase a link to a public file starts getting shared like crazy: an intersticial.

I added a subdomain to my website, http://box.leebyron.com to use as the base URL for these links. http://box.leebyron.com/file.zip is the goal.

There are two files in this new subdomain, .htaccess and index.php. Similar to how pretty-urls and custom 404s are implemented.

Check out these files at http://gist.github.com/326328.

Reader Replies

  1. christian replied
    on Mar 9th, 2010 at 4:38 am

    That’s a good idea! I’m in like with Dropbox considering Linux is also well supported!

  2. Bruno replied
    on Aug 15th, 2010 at 2:46 pm

    Hello Lee,

    Thanks for the tip! It works like a charm!

  3. Jordan replied
    on Nov 12th, 2010 at 9:26 pm

    The first time I heard about Drop box, I was blogging with a friend and he talked about it being a friend to files and so he was willing to be a guarantor. Then I read that same thing from your blog and I might admit that the custom domain is just what it is said to be

  4. SHANE replied
    on Nov 23rd, 2010 at 1:30 pm

    I DONT HAVE A WEBSITE…CAN I STILL USE A CUSTOM DOMAIN?? OR CAN I JUST PURCHASE A BALK WEB SITE UTILIZING MY REGISTER. COM DOMAIN NAME

  5. David Ankers replied
    on Dec 7th, 2010 at 5:02 am

    Very clever solution. Thanks for sharing.

  6. bronze replied
    on Jun 13th, 2011 at 5:25 pm

    Hello

    Ive been trying to implement this on a new server and i keep getting an error (worked fine on my former server)

    from the error.log: [Mon Jun 13 12:45:51 2011] [error] [client xxx] File does not exist: proxy:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/myuser/test.txt

    After googling what might be the causes, Ive asked my hosting (dreamhost) if they have mod_proxy installed, and they do.

    Any ideas how to troubleshoot/fix this?
    Any help would be much appreciated.

  7. koko replied
    on Nov 7th, 2011 at 9:03 pm

    Good advice, I will implement.

  8. Stephen Hau replied
    on Feb 24th, 2012 at 3:25 am

    This works fine under Apache, but not under my other site using Lightspeed.

    I’ll report back if I find a solution! Thanks for the tip though.

  9. Gabriel Harper replied
    on Sep 27th, 2012 at 11:33 pm

    Dropbox has made a lot of changes, or maybe it’s just me, but it redirects using an .htaccess rule. DNS CNAME presents security warnings.

    I ended up using PHP:

    http://gabrielharper.com/blog/2012/09/custom-domain-dropbox-folders-with-php/

    Hey, it works.

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    on Nov 6th, 2012 at 12:09 pm

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  11. Sam replied
    on May 10th, 2013 at 2:29 am

    I’ve been searching for this since a long time, but was not successful always had problems with the URL structure. Thanks for the advice and info!

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