Using the IPFS network to host a website can be yours in under an hour, you will need a html website or landing page and a domain using CloudFlare for DNS. If you don’t already own a domain then Namecheap come highly recommended with good privacy and cheap renewals. Generally .xyz domains are available for 99p or less
Tools:
- HTML website
- Domain
- Free CloudFlare Account
- Free Pinata Account
The site I created can be at https://bitcoin.cryptopticon.com, I built a web page from scratch with the aim of making the Bitcoin whitepaper more readable on smartphone and tablet. It was a single page called index.html and a directory for the assets that when uploaded it took up 510.8 KB of space. It’s a minimal static page mainly formatted for mobile use.
To upload the site I created an account at pinata.cloud, there is a free tier that comes with 1GB of space. Once an account has been created then in the top right corner there is the Pinata Upload option. Followed by choosing the Upload Directory Option and selecting the site files to be uploaded
Next you’ll be able to find the IPFS hash in the Pin Explorer section, using the three dots to the right of the table, select ‘copy hash’.
Now that you have the IPFS hash this needs adding into the DNS for the domain, below you can see the add record section for CloudFlare, there will be two records that need adding: 1) is a CNAME for the subdomain being used.
2) Add a TXT record including the IPFS Hash copied from the Pin Explorer on Pinata:
Name: _dnslink.bitcoin
content dnslink=/QmeRkW4fMipHRFJhBktCtXnP3Z56VCN9HPbu2ZNfH9zDNh
Now when anyone visits https://bitcoin.cryptopticon.com they load up the IPFS site hosted on Pinata. One of the benefits of IPFS is immutability. No part of that website I’ve hosted can be changed without changing the hash. It takes the data that makes up the site and creates a unique hash based on that information. The hash for the Bitcoin IPFS whitepaper is:
QmeRkW4fMipHRFJhBktCtXnP3Z56VCN9HPbu2ZNfH9zDNh
This has can be re-pinned to other IPFS clusters or hosted on different subdomains. The IPFS network runs as a peer to peer file system and content is easily shared whilst anyone using that specific hash cannot change a single letter of the content thanks to the immutability.
