Public Hosting allows you to share files and directories via public URLs. By default, these public URLs are hosted under the hosted-by-files.com domain.

If you want to serve Publicly Hosted Folders from your own domain, there's a simple and effective solution. You can use an edge platform, such as Cloudflare workers, Netlify edge functions, Akamai EdgeWorkers, Vercel, Fastly Compute@Edge, or AWS Lambda@Edge, in front of your Files.com public links to seamlessly rewrite requests and responses.

By using one of these modern hosting platforms in conjunction with your Publicly Hosted Folders, you gain full control over the domain, branding, and delivery experience without requiring deep integration into the Files.com platform.

This method is fast to implement, low maintenance, and is useful in many different situations.

Example Use Case: Re-Using a Portal With Multiple Brands

If you need to serve many of the same assets under multiple brands, you can use your chosen edge platform with any of your domains, all of which will interact with the same <subdomain>.hosted-by-files.com hosted folder on your Files.com site.

Follow the steps from your chosen hosting platform to rewrite the URLs in your requests and responses and assign it to all of your domains. Now you have one place to control the content of your assets, which are published across all of your domains for your customers.

Example Use Case: Hiding Structure or Versioning

A common use for public hosting is to provide an easy method for distributing software updates and patches. Often, these employ some form of semantic versioning, with separate sub-folders for each individual release version.

By using an edge compute provider to rewrite requests, you can intercept requests to folders that represent different versions, such as pointing requests for something like https://downloads.example.com/latest/ to https://example.hosted-by-files.com/downloads/v2.0.3.61 . Adding other facade folders is a matter of pushing updated code to your edge computer, such as when version 2.0.3.62 has passed internal QA and now becomes the latest stable version you wish to publish.

Example Use Case: Healthcare - Simplified Access to Patient Resources

Healthcare and telemedicine requires your patients to trust that their online interactions with you are safe, and serving your Public Hosting folders under your own domain supports that trust.

You can also use edge platforms to provide easy-to-remember URLs for accessing personal documents like patient education materials, intake forms, or appointment prep guides. Instead of publishing https://exampleclinic.hosted-by-files.com/patient-resources/forms/new-visit.pdf you could instead direct your patients to a URL such as https://my.exampleclinic.com/forms/new-visit.pdf

Example Use Case: Media & Entertainment - Custom Access to Promotional Assets

By rewriting the requests from your custom domain, you can route branded campaign links to specific media kits or assets without exposing backend file systems.

Instead of a URL such as https://examplemedia.hosted-by-files.com/assets/2025/hollywood-blockbuster/images/poster-hires.jpg , you could publish https://media.example.com/promo-blockbuster/poster.jpg

This promotes a clean, sharable URL in press releases and makes it easy to update your assets in the future without breaking URLs.

Example Use Case: Manufacturing & Distribution - Region-Based Technical Docs

Use edge providers to serve region-specific manuals or datasheets based on country codes or subdomains.

Rather than forcing your users to wade through a hierarchy of localized assets, eventually arriving at something like: https://globalexample.hosted-by-files.com/products/eu/gx3000/manual.pdf you could respond with https://eu.docs.globalexample.com/gx3000/manual.pdf

This provides convenient access to localized documentation while centralizing backend storage.

Implementing URL Rewrites

Rewriting your request URLs on an edge provider without redirecting a visitor is a common goal. We've provided some links to get you started, but strongly recommend checking your provider's help documentation for the best practices in using their services to proxy requests to Files.com Public Hosting.

CloudFlare

Cloudflare Workers allow you to create URL rewrite rules that operate on the edge, enabling seamless redirection without exposing the underlying URL structure.

You'll need to set up a worker on CloudFlare, add custom code to the worker to modify each request, and create a route on each custom domain that you want the worker to serve.

Fastly Compute@Edge

Fastly's Compute@Edge enables you to deploy custom logic at the edge, allowing for dynamic URL path rewriting to manage request routing effectively.

Akamai EdgeWorkers

Akamai's EdgeWorkers provide the capability to manipulate HTML content dynamically at the edge, facilitating URL rewriting and content modification before it reaches the client.

AWS Lambda@Edge

AWS Lambda@Edge allows you to execute functions such as dynamic URL rewriting and request handling at AWS edge locations.

Vercel Edge Middleware

Vercel's Edge Middleware allows for the interception and modification of requests at the edge, enabling hostname rewrites and dynamic routing for your applications.

Netlify Edge Functions

Netlify Edge Functions provide the ability to rewrite requests on one URL to resources available on another URL, allowing for flexible request handling and routing at the edge.