How to Share Your E-Learning Course for Free With Google Drive

Share your e-learning course for free with Google Drive

UPDATE: Google is deprecating this feature and it'll no longer work after August 31, 2016. Consider using Amazon S3 or your own website instead.

For a quick and easy way to share your published Articulate projects, you might want to consider Google Drive. You probably already know about Google Drive’s file sharing capability, but did you know that Google recently added a web hosting feature? This new feature means that Google Drive can host your published Articulate projects.

STEP 1: How to upload your published Articulate project to Google Drive:

1. Log in to Google Drive.

2. Create a new folder.

3. Set this folder’s sharing settings to “Public on the web”

4. Upload the published output from your Articulate project.

5. Rename the appropriate launch file to index.html

For a Storyline course, rename the story.html file.
For a Presenter presentation, rename the player.html file.
For a Quizmaker quiz, rename the quiz.html file.
For an Engage interaction, rename the engage.html file.

STEP 2: How to find the link for sharing:

1. From within the folder containing your published content, copy the characters after drive.google.com/#folders/ from the address bar as shown below.

2. Then, to get the link you to use for sharing with others, paste those copied characters to the end of http://googledrive.com/host/

https://googledrive.com/host/0B-p5Xrlt8ArKaTlPd3RSOHdjSG8/

HELPFUL HINT: I have found that Google Chrome is the best web browser to use with Google Drive. Not all Google Drive features work by default in other browsers.

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331 Comments

Lissbeth McCrodden

almost 10 years ago07/02/14 at 8:56 pm (UTC)

Guy what steps did you take since you say it works with captivate? I've been using it with Articulate files and I haven't tried a captivate file yet.

Guy Fraser

almost 10 years ago07/02/14 at 9:07 pm (UTC)

Hi Lissbeth, I published the captivate as an HTML5 ouput. Then I opened Google Drive in Chrome browser and created a new folder with the same name as the HTML5 output folder. Then I took the HTML5 output folder from captivate, opened it, and dragged all the folder contents into Google Drive. I didn't need to rename the index.html file, as there was already and index.html file in there. After that, it worked exactly like Mike's instructions - share the new folder to public, select the index.html - copy the unique part of the url, and paste it to the end of the googledrive.com/host/ url. There's a setting in captivates publishing settings that causes some issues - "Scalable HTML content". If you ensure this isn't ticked, it should work no problem. If you have any issues with it, let... Expand

Primie Q

over 9 years ago07/28/14 at 1:26 am (UTC)

Hi Mike, I just want to know if I can add multiple folders of my storyline on google drive? I was able to got a link from my first folder, but when I add another articulate it can show any ..it doesn't preview...Please help! Thanks! Primie

Mike Taylor
Author

over 9 years ago07/28/14 at 5:12 am (UTC)

@Primie, if you want to add another course you can put it in a different folder of its own. They don't all need to be in the same folder. Is that what you want to do?

Primie Q

over 9 years ago07/28/14 at 7:39 am (UTC)

Hi Mike, Thanks for the response. I uploaded it on different folder. Fortunately I was able to got the link now. But still thanks for the advice.. ;)

Giang Duong

over 9 years ago08/11/14 at 7:08 am (UTC)

Great video with clear instructions! Highly useful for our work! Thanks a lot Mike! All the best, Giang

Jack Hyland

over 9 years ago08/26/14 at 1:46 am (UTC)

Partially works for me - unfortunately embedded YouTube videos don't work.

Jack Hyland

over 9 years ago08/26/14 at 3:45 am (UTC)

...but videos from file added to Storyline work fine

Laura Payette

over 9 years ago08/28/14 at 4:08 pm (UTC)

I struggled with getting this to work and discovered, based on Lissbeth's comment, that for me I had to change story.html too index.html before dragging the folder over to Google. No idea why this order of operations made a difference, but it did! Also, I don't have a clean URL like Mike does when I go to copy the end for hosting. Instead of seeing https://drive.google.com/#folders/biglongstringhere, I see https://drive.google.com/?usp=chrome_app#folders/biglongstringhere. No idea whether that has some influence or not. ???

Mike Taylor
Author

over 9 years ago08/29/14 at 6:10 am (UTC)

Hey Laura! I'm not sure if it's related to this or not but Google has made some changes recently that could possibly have an impact. The URL business is a bit clunky. I just manually change it.

Melissa Jorge

over 9 years ago09/15/14 at 1:34 pm (UTC)

Hi! I have been using Google Drive to create links but recently Google made some updates and I have not been able to create links. Any work around to this? Or any suggestions of other ways we can create free links? Thanks!

Mike Taylor
Author

over 9 years ago09/16/14 at 6:06 am (UTC)

Hi Melissa! I saw that Google made some updates and I just tried this with a newly created account and it still works for me. Under the settings button there is an option to "Experience the new Google Drive" and you do NOT want to do that. It breaks this hosting feature.

Tamara Seals

over 9 years ago09/17/14 at 1:15 pm (UTC)

I'm having the same problem. I had a working link before I went to lunch and when I came back, I get an error page. I checked my other links that have been working and they are not working either. I have not clicked on the new Google Drive. Any other thoughts?

Klemen Stepišnik

over 9 years ago09/17/14 at 1:38 pm (UTC)

I suggest everybody to use Dropbox. It has the same, more reliable feature and it's a also handier. Just put your files in public folder (dekstop or web app), rename yourpresentation.html to index.html (like in Google Drive), right click to index.html and Copy public link. That easy. Tutorial here: http://www.hastac.org/blogs/kerryclark/2013/11/05/hosting-content-using-dropbox-public-folder

Tamara Seals

over 9 years ago09/17/14 at 2:23 pm (UTC)

I tried Dropbox but the presentation does not play. I just get a white page.

Lesley Lewis

over 9 years ago09/17/14 at 4:22 pm (UTC)

I seem to be having the same problem. I checked my links just this morning and now they all give me a 403 error. I also checked dropbox however in order to share the files there, you have to upload it to a public folder and unfortunately i don't have a public folder in my account nor can I enable it since I need to have either a pro or business account to do so. Any other ideas?

Jill Staut

over 9 years ago09/17/14 at 6:51 pm (UTC)

Yikes - I am having the same problem. After lunch today my project now throws a 404 error. I guess that's one way to learn your content is being accessed. My email box blew up after. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to correct this. I am hoping someone finds a way to get this corrected. I did not update to the new drive, either.

Jay Yearley

over 9 years ago09/17/14 at 7:54 pm (UTC)

Yes, unfortunately it doesn't seem to be working currently. If anyone finds a way to get it going, please feel free to share!

Jack Hyland

over 9 years ago09/18/14 at 1:58 am (UTC)

FYI - I've tried doing this with Microsoft's OneDrive using the same instructions as above but it doesn't work

Mike Taylor
Author

over 9 years ago09/18/14 at 3:48 am (UTC)

I wonder if Google is rolling out changes gradually. I just created a new account to test this and it is still working for me. I even tried it with the new version of Google Drive. I'll keep digging to see what I can find out. It might be worth double checking that nothing changed with the Sharing options, etc and that is still "Public on the Web" I also saw that someone had 2 index.html files and had to delete one to make it work. Keep us posted if you discover a solution. It looks like new Dropbox accounts can't get the Public folder functionality with a free account either. What a bummer! @Jack I don't think this is possible with OneDrive

Lesley Lewis

over 9 years ago09/18/14 at 2:51 pm (UTC)

Just an update, I just tried re-uploading and re-linking my files again using the same google account ( i changed nothing) and it seems to work now. Hope everyone else is as successful.