Open Source For You — December 2017

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http://www.OpenSourceForU.com | OPEN SOURCE FOR YOU | DECEMBER 2017 | 53

T

he cloud is currently very popular across businesses.

It has been stable for some time and many industries

are moving towards cloud technologies. However,

a major challenge in the cloud environment is privacy and

the security of data. Organisations or individuals host their

professional or personal data on the cloud, and there are

many providers who promise a 99 per cent guarantee for

the safety of user data. Yet, there are chances of security

breaches and privacy concerns. Therefore, many companies

have pulled their data from public clouds and started

creating their own private cloud storage. Using ownCloud,

one can create services similar to Dropbox and iCloud. We

can sync and share files, calendars and more. Let’s take a

look at how we can do this.

ownCloud

ownCloud is free and open source software that operates like

any cloud storage system on your own domain. It is very

quick and easy to set up compared to other similar software.

It can be used not only for file sharing but also to leverage

many features like text editors, to-do lists, etc. ownCloud

can be integrated with any desktop or mobile calendar and

contact apps. So now, we don’t really require a Google Drive

or Dropbox account.

Requirements for ownCloud

Web hosting

You will need hosting space and a domain name so that you

can access your storage publicly, anywhere and anytime. You

ownCloud is an open source, self-hosted file ‘sync and share’ app platform, which

allows users to access, synchronise and share data anytime and anywhere, without

the worries associated with the public cloud.

can register a domain and hosting space with any service

provider like GoDaddy or BigRock. The only requirement

is that the hosting service should support PHP and MySQL,

which most hosting providers usually do.

ownCloud server

There are different ways to install ownCloud server but here, we

will use the easiest and quickest method. It will not take more

than five minutes to get your cloud ready. We need to download

the latest version of the ownCloud server and install it.

To install and configure ownCloud, go to the

link https://owncloud.org/install/. From this link,

download the ownCloud server, https://owncloud.org/

install/#instructions-server.

The current version is 10.0.3. Click on Download

ownCloud Server. Select the Web installer from the top options

in the left side menus. Check Figure 1 for more details.

Figure 1 mentions the installation steps. We need to

download the setup-owncloud.php file and upload it into the

Web space.

We will upload the file using winSCP or any similar

kind of software. Here, I am using winSCP. If you don’t

have winSCP, you can download it first from the link https://

winscp.net/eng/download.php.

The next step is to get to know your FTP credentials in

order to connect to your Web space. For that, you need to

log in to your hosting provider portal. From the menu, you

will find the FTP options, where you see your credentials.

This approach varies based on your hosting provider. Since I

bought my hosting from ipage.com, this was how I found my

Use ownCloud to Keep Your

Data Safe and Secure