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With the advancement of cloud computing, Dropbox has become a cornerstone of mobile computing. The ability to manipulate files on one device, have them stored “in the cloud”, and then reflect these changes on all of one’s devices has provided a great deal of flexibility for consumers. I wanted to extend this functionality to a shared web hosting environment (in my case, BlueHost).

First, you’ll need SSH access to your box. For security reasons, all Dropbox files will be kept outside of the public_html folder.

1.) Login via SSH to your box.

2.) mkdir ~/dropbox-exec

3.) cd ~/dropbox-exec

4.) wget -O dropbox.tar.gz "http://www.dropbox.com/download/?plat=lnx.x86"

We created a directory, navigated to it, and downloaded the latest 64-bit compliant Linux source for Dropbox.

5.) tar -xvzf dropbox.tar.gz

6.) rm dropbox.tar.gz

7.) ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

Now we unzipped the tarball, removed the original compressed file, and executed the main Dropbox script.

8.) You’ll get a message like:

This client is not linked to any account… Please visit https://www.dropbox.com/cli_link?host_id=xxxxxxxxxx to link this machine.

9.) Copy and paste that link into a browser and navigate there. This essentially “links” your shared host to your Dropbox repository.

10.) BlueHost periodically terminates the Dropbox process, so I added a cronjob (under CPanel) to keep the process running every 5 minutes. The cron command will simply be the path to your dropboxd script. For example: /home/fill-in-your-username/dropbox-exec/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

You’ll notice that under your root directory (/home/username) you now have a “Dropbox” folder with all the contents of your repository. Now you can throw things into the cloud whenever you want. For example, I have a simple PHP script which backs ups and optimizes my WordPress SQL databases every day, eliminating the need for a resource-hogging plugin and giving me the piece of mind that my database is stored in more than one place.

Let me know if this guide helps and/or if you have any questions!

Legal

As a third year medical student at Baylor College of Medicine, my posts are intended to educate others and share my experiences from this incredible journey without violating patient privacy at all costs. These blurbs are not to serve as a replacement for recommendations provided by licensed physicians under any circumstance.