## Textile Bucket
With [a recent big release](https://blog.textile.io/announcing-the-textile-protocol-hub/) of Textile Hub and `tt` toolset, we can now start publishing dweb websites and apps with ease. Textile is a company that makes good efforts to build apps and technology that makes dWeb a place more private for a user as well as not much different to what the user got used to while using internet as he knows it.

About one year ago, they have released the [Textile Photo](https://github.com/textileio/photos), which tries to make Google Photos obsolete in terms of backing up your photo memories. The biggest adventage is that user can have his pictures backed up on his or oter nodes, but encrypted. It has been built on Textile Threads which is another technology to have a CRUD database served on IPFS and it works well! Thanks to the approach to make it MongoDB-like there is almost no learning curve while using it.

Last days, they have released the `tt` tool, which is a combination of IPFS pinning service together with Thread managing service. You just create a passwordless account and you can start pushing things to IPFS nodes while they are pinned on Textile nodes on your behalf.

![tt command help](images/post/textile/tt.png)

**Textile Bucket** is just a storage, which feels like S3 object-storage. You can add/modify/remove data like to buckets on Amazon, but on IPFS. As what is added to IPFS is immutuable, they use the IPNS to point to the right content and to track made changes they use underlaying Threads. Smart - isn't it?

## How to get started?
### Download and install
Once you got a `tt` [downloaded](https://github.com/textileio/textile/releases/latest) and [installed](https://docs.textile.io/hub/accounts/), type in `tt init` and provide your email address, select a nickname and confirm the email that will arrive to your mailbox. That will create you an account and let you access your resources from any place.

### Create a bucket
Next, it's important to create a directory inside which we will keep our data. So create a new one and execute `tt bucket init` from it. Even though the naming is optional, think of something short and descriptive. It will help to keep things organized later.

![tt bucket init](images/post/textile/tt_bucket_init.png)

### Copy and publish your website's files
IPFS is perfect to host static websites. For that reason I exported my blog, which is build on Next.js. Just two commands were needed: `next build` and `next export`. I copy over the `out` directory from the root folder of my Next.js project, which is the standard one for rendered static websites and place the content of it to the directory created in the previous step.

Now, you can just do `tt bucket push . .` (which stands for push to root of current bucket, all files and it's subdirectories). When all of the files will be deployed to Textile Hub, you will be able to access your decentalized website from any IPFS gateway, even your own.

![tt bucket push . .](images/post/textile/tt_bucket_push_._..png)

### View current website
To do so, execute `tt bucket links`. You will be displayed with a bunch of them. First one is pointing to the directory view of your files, second one is having immutualble pointer to your website. Third one is just a pointer to other gateway.

![tt bucket links](images/post/textile/tt_bucket_list.png)

To access it from any other gateway, you just need find one that understands `/ipns/..` links (most of them are capable of it and there are plenty of them [here](https://ipfs.github.io/public-gateway-checker/)). It's also good to remember that those without "Origin" capability probably will cause issues if your website relative hyperlinks or images added in for of relative links. That's because of how relative linked content is handled by a browser.

![IPFS Public Gateway Checker](images/post/ipfs/public-gateway-checker.png)

And probably the most exciting thing - if you or somebody else got a self-hosted gateway, you can access your website directly from it. Just go to `http://<your_gateway_ip>/ipns/<ipns_hash>`! Happy dWebbing :D

## What is IPFS?
It's a protocol that helps computers to exchange data between them without a need of centralized servers. That opens a lot of opportunities like:
- shared files can't be deleted (censor free)
- data could be distributed across multiple machines (no single point of failure)
- data can be downloaded faster (works similar to CDN, but decentralized; data can be downloaded from multiple computers simultaneously)

## How to get started?
Simply, go to https://ipfs.io/ and click the "Install" link in the navigator. There are multiple ways of getting started and it depends on how experienced you are (I'll go just through the basic options now):
- **Desktop App** - nice app with a GUI (Graphical User Interface), tray icon, integration with OS - probably the best choice if you want to install it with "one-click". It is the most convenient way to get started. Also comes with an addon of `npm-ipfs` - a nice addon which allows to fetch `npm` packages through IPFS. Nice-to-have for all Node.js developers and actually you will be using the benefits of IPFS every time you fetch any package :-)
- **Command Line** - probably the best option for tech-savvy users, gives you the access to all features of IPFS. We will cover this in later posts. It also comes preinstalled with the 'Desktop app'
- **Browser Extension** - as name says, provides you with a way of accessing IPFS network through a browser. A good helper if you would like to browse websites that reside on IPFS. The extension can check if a website is available on IPFS network when you enter the website's address and serve you it's content through IPFS. Implements an IPFS node in JS. Slower, but works!

Pick which option is best for you!

![IPFS has variety of clients available](images/ipfs-variety-of-clients.png)

Next, you are redirected to GitHub page or Chrome Extension Store. The installation from Store requires just to click the "Add to (browser_name)" button. In the latter go to the "Releases" on GitHub and select a suitable version for you.

![Click "Releases"](images/github-releases.png)
![Select the right version for your OS](images/github-ipfs-assets.png)

Once you have it installed, open the app from a try by clicking on the tray icon and then selecting "Status". You will be presented with an app interface.

Go to "Files" -> "Add +" -> "File". Select any file that you want to share :-) The file will appear bellow on the list together with an `IPFS Hash`. Copy it and try to access it by going to `https://ipfs.io/ipfs/<hash>`. It might take a while for it to be displayed, but the more active connections you have to other IPFS peers, the quicker it can be discovered by others.

Put your first website on Textile Buckets

Share your first file over IPFS