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 may fail because you've enabled authentication for the publicly hosted folder and the visitor does not provide the right credentials. An attempt to access a path that does not exist on your public hosting domain will fail. Failed requests are included in your billable API calls.

Other file operations that occur in publicly shared folders are captured in their respective logs. For example, operations by logged-in users are included in History Logs, and 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.

You can configure each Public Hosting folder to Require a password to access. When a password is enabled, web crawlers are blocked and your files cannot be 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.

Basic HTTP authentication is the only form of authentication available with Public Hosting.

Custom domains do not apply to Public Hosting URLs. To use a custom domain, pair Public Hosting with an edge platform.