Managing Public Hosting

Public Hosting serves files at a Files.com-owned domain. Day-to-day management covers how requests are logged and billed, how to control search engine indexing, and what configuration options the feature does and does not support.

Logging

Public Hosting logs capture the requests related to publicly served files, including failed requests. A request fails when the visitor does not supply the correct credentials for a password-protected folder, when site login is required and the visitor is not authenticated, or when the requested path does not exist on your public hosting domain. Failed requests are included in your billable API calls.

When a folder requires site login, actions taken by authenticated users on that folder are captured in History Logs. This gives you a full audit trail of who accessed the content and when, which is useful for internal folders serving employees, contractors, or partners. Other file operations that occur in publicly shared folders are captured in their respective logs. Downloads via share links are found in Share Links Usage Logs.

Search Engine Crawlers

Files.com automatically publishes a standard robots.txt file for the hosting domain instructing automated crawlers not to access your public hosted URLs. Most major search engines honor this directive, but compliance is not guaranteed across all crawlers.

Password-protecting a folder blocks web crawlers and prevents files from being indexed by search engines.

Configuration Limitations

Public Hosting does not support additional configuration options such as custom HTTP headers.

Public Hosting cannot serve sites that rely on server-side scripting, such as PHP, .NET, JSP, or database actions.

Custom Domains

When your site has a Primary Custom Domain, all of your publicly hosted folders are automatically available at that domain. You can use additional Custom Domains to host specific Public Hosting folders, or for all Public Hosting folders. This lets you use separate addresses for your standard site activities versus public hosting.

If you need even more control over the served URL, such as custom rewrite rules, pair Public Hosting with an edge platform instead.