Quickly Deploying dWebsites with Handshake & Fleek
Creating Websites of The Future
Fleek is a platform that makes it easier and faster to deploy permissionless, trustless, censorship resistant websites on the decentralized web.
Recently, Fleek announced a native integration with Handshake so you can easily connect an IPFS or dfinity website to one of your Handshake names. In this guide I’ll show you how easy it is to claim a piece of the dWeb.
For this guide, you’ll need
- A Github repository with content. (Github’s official docs are very helpful; I wrote a step-by-step guide for building a Pages site as well.)
- A Handshake name on Namebase.
Creating your website with Fleek
First, connect your Github account.
Next, select your repository — I used my personal website, a static site built with Jekyll.
Then choose your hosting provider. Fleek currently offers IPFS or dFinity. I chose IPFS.
The final step is to configure the build options for static site generators like Jekyll or Gatsby. My website is built with Jekyll, and Fleek nicely populated all of the build settings for me ♥️.
Once you’ve set your options, click Deploy Site to build it on the decentralized web! You can follow the deploy progress from the Fleek console.
In less than two minutes, I ported my personal website to the dWeb.
When the build is complete, Fleek generates a URL so you can visit your site.
Setting your Handshake domain
From your site manager, select the Settings tab ➡️ Domain Management➡️ HNS.
Click Add HNS to add your domain.
After verifying you want to use that domain, you’ll have to configure it to point to your Fleek site. Clicking Check HNS configuration will open a prompt to redirect you to Namebase.
From Namebase, click Confirm to automatically update the DNS records for your domain to serve your new Fleek site. Once you’re redirected back to Fleek, click on Check HNS configuration again to verify the new DNS records.
After verifying the settings, the Check HNS configuration warning will disappear, and your Fleek site is now accessible with your Handshake name.
Visit your dWebsite
While Handshake isn’t natively supported in most major browsers (yet), there are multiple ways to access your site using your HNS name. Some of the options from the Fleek blog post:
HNS.to is a Handshake resolver that can load your name by appending .hns.to to the URL; you can access my website via mandelliant.hns.to.
Puma is a browser with Handshake compatibility built in.
Linkframe is a Chrome extension that can resolve Handshake domains.
HDNS and NextDNS allow you to change your device settings to point to Handshake-compatible DNS addresses.
hds is the Handshake daemon & full node which lets you resolve domains locally.
Learn more about Handshake and the dWeb
Happy building! If you want to learn more about Handshake and what’s to come for the DWeb from Blockchannel.
More Handshake resources:
Why names are the most valuable assets on the internet
The bullish case for Handshake
