Hosting a Website on Google Drive with a Custom Domain for Free: A Comprehensive Guide

 Hosting a Website on Google Drive with a Custom Domain for Free: A Comprehensive Guide

Are you looking for a way to host your website without spending a fortune on web hosting services? If so, you are in luck. Google Drive offers a free and secure way to host basic websites, as well as complex JavaScript web apps. This guide will walk you through the steps of hosting your website on Google Drive and assigning it to a custom domain name for free.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have the following:

A Google Drive account

Your website files (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, icons, images, audio-video, and podcasts)

An index.html file, which will be served when someone tries to access your website

A domain name registered with a domain provider, such as Namecheap

Step 1: Uploading Your Website to Google Drive

First, create a folder on your Google Drive to store your website files. Next, drag and drop your website folder into this new folder. Make sure the folder name starts with "www".

Step 2: Making Your Folder Public

Right-click on the folder and select "Get shareable link". Before you proceed, make sure that the link is public and can be accessed by anyone.

Step 3: Accessing Your Website on Google Drive

Open a new tab in your browser and type "drive.google.com" to access Google Drive. Sign in with the email associated with your Google Drive account, then allow Google to access your files.

Your website is now hosted on Google Drive and can be accessed through the URL generated by Google. If you want to use a custom domain name for your website, follow the steps below.

Step 4: Assigning Your Custom Domain Name

Copy the URL generated by Google Drive, then log in to your domain provider. Remove any name servers from your previous web hosting provider, then add a new name record with the following information:

Host: your domain name

Value: paste the URL generated by Google Drive, but remove the "https://" prefix and all the text that comes after "drive.google.com"

TTL: select 30 minutes

To allow your visitors to access your website without the "www" prefix, you must also add a new URL redirect record with the following information:

Value: "http://" followed by your domain name

It may take up to 30 minutes for the records to be globally accepted, but since you just changed name servers, it could take up to 48 hours for your site to be live again. You can track the progress of propagation with the help of tools such as "whatsmydns.net" or "kproxy.com".

Step 5: Improving the Speed of Your Website

If your website is slower than it used to be, you can improve its speed by signing up for a free account on Cloudflare. Add your website, then copy the CNAME record value and create a new TXT record with the following information:

Name: "www"

Value: paste the text you copied from Cloudflare, followed by "drive.google.com"

Go back to your domain provider and paste the name server values in the name server fields, then save your changes.

Congratulations, your website is now online and accessible through your custom domain name, with no hosting costs.

Conclusion

Hosting your website on Google Drive with a custom domain name is a cost-effective and secure solution for basic and JavaScript web apps. This guide has shown you the steps