Hosting your Captivate or Storyline courses for free

So you’ve developed a fabulous course using Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline. Now, you want to show it off. Maybe you want to feature it in your elearning portfolio, or send it to your subject matter expert for review.

It’s clunky, to say the least, to send over the zipped version of your published course. It’s usually too large to send by email, so you have to share it via Dropbox or Google. Then, the recipient has to download, unzip, and hunt for the right file to launch the course.

Then, there’s almost always a problem viewing the course. Most browsers these days consider viewing HTML5 or Flash content to be a security risk when opened from your local hard drive. There are ways to override your browser’s nanny settings, but it’s complicated.

The most seamless way to share your courses is to host them on the web, and just share the relevant URL with your portfolio viewers or with your subject matter experts.

But you can’t host them on Wix or Weebly. These are fabulous free web page platforms, but they do not serve web content like your course. Keep in mind that your course really is a mini-web page and viewing your course may be more complicated than you think!

Your published course is a folder that usually contains several html or flash files. These are files that contain code which is the bones of your course. Usually there’s some CSS styling and javascript in those files as well, making things more complicated. When you open the index.html or story.html launch file, that file calls up the relevant code, and that code calls the course’s images and audio files and other supporting multimedia (the organs and skin of your course!).

Free platforms like Wix may allow you to attach files, or to upload flat graphics that do not contain code, or embed YouTube videos, but they do not interpret files that contain code or support files that call up other multimedia. They don’t put together the whole body for you.

In order to be reassembled and displayed properly for your user without downloading the zip file, your course has to live on a web server.

A web server is a system that is connected to the internet. It understands web addresses and it speaks your browser’s language. When you type a web address into your browser, your browser contacts the relevant server that contains the content you want. The server responds with the requested files. Your browser puts them all together for you to use.

To host your courses online, you either have to pay for your own server space and a domain name, or, you can turn to one of these free options below.

Remember – you have to publish your course first! When your server storage space is ready, you’ll upload the entire folder, unzipped, and provide a link to the launch file (i.e. story.html or index.html).

 

Top Choice

Google Cloud Platform

• Have to create an account
• Have to provide a credit card number (lots of free storage, but you will be charged for going over)
• Upload and manage files via your browser
• Optional – Upload and manage files with third-party software (Windows or Mac)
• Directions on my website

 

Also Try

Articulate Tempshare

• Only works with Storyline/Articulate files
• Upload your zipped course
• Generates URL for you to share
• Files are deleted after 10 days
• Go to Articulate Tempshare

SCORM Cloud

• Storage limit of 100 mb
• 10 user limit for free version
• Go to SCORM Cloud

GitHub

• Have to create a free account and a repository
• Download and install GitHub Desktop
• File size limit of 100 mb, repository size limit of 1gb
• Directions are for Captivate, but this would work for any published files
• Go to directions on Joanne Shipman’s website

 

Not Recommended

Amazon S3

Note: I’ve heard two reports that this platform doesn’t work well. No matter how the permissions are set, content cannot be viewed, so try this one as a last resort.

• 5 GB free for one year
• Have to create an account
• Download and install Cloudberry Explorer (Windows only)
• Directions at the Articulate blog