[Web key directory](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-koch-openpgp-webkey-service/) or WKD refers to the method of uploading one's public key to their website in a specific location to make it easily accessible by other services supporting WKD. The key will be discoverable using an identifier similar to an email address: **username@domain.org**.
The benefit of WKD is having full control over the key while still having it widely available. It does however require a domain and some form of file hosting. Luckily, [openpgp.org](https://keys.openpgp.org/about/usage#wkd-as-a-service) have made a WKD-as-a-service. Read more at the end of the guide.
It exists in two variants: the Direct setup and the Advanced setup. Despite their names, both require roughly the same steps.
## The Direct setup
To make your keys available via WKD using the Direct setup, you'll need two paths on your server:
**https://domain.org/.well-known/openpgpkey/policy**: this is an empty file
**https://domain.org/.well-known/openpgpkey/hu/LOCALPART**: this is the binary public key (so NOT ASCII armored)
The LOCALPART above is actually the username hashed using the SHA-1 algorithm and encoded using the Z-Base-32 method. As it's not humanly possible to compute this by ourselves, Keyoxide provides a [small utility to do this for you](/util/wkd).
So if you wish to make your key available as **jimothy@dm.com**, according to the [small utility](/util/wkd), the URL would become:
