Hey there 405th, so I know a few people around here already use Dropbox to host their files and pictures for the forums, but it seems like a lot of people don't know about it and how easy it is to use for hosting.
What is Dropbox? It's a small, and FREE program that is intended to allow you to share files between your computers, and store them safely online. This has the added bonus of you being able to make some files public for use on the web, just like web hosting! It also allows you to keep control of your files better, as every change you make to them is reflected online almost immediately, making edits and changes to files a breeze. To get the Dropbox application, and an account with them, go to http://www.dropbox.com (or use this link if you feel like being nice and using my referral code when you sign up
) Once you have it installed, drag a file you want to share into the "Public" folder of your Dropbox folder, right click your file, go to the Dropbox menu, and click on "copy public link". Paste that link into your forum post, and you've now hosted a file on the internets!Sounds cool, what kinds of things can I host on Dropbox? Literally any file you can drag into the folder, you can share. Images, pep files, the complete works of William Shakespeare, you name it. From there, you can use pictures on the forums, host pep files for direct download (no more of that 4shared waiting around!), or anything else you could do with a file hosted on a proper server. (Remember to ask for permission before sharing other people's pep files!) You could technically run an entire small website from your Dropbox (in fact they say you could on their official wiki). You can also share folders with specific other users, very cool for collaborative projects and the like.
This is too good to be true, what's the catch? There is a 2gb size limit for free accounts. But this is a huge number, I HOPE you don't have more than 2gb of pep files and pictures to share with us.
It also can't resize pictures like Photobucket or flickr does, so if you don't know how to do that, it might not be the best option for your pictures.There are more detailed instructions on the Dropbox official website, which I've linked to above. I've been using it exclusively for picture sharing and hosting for over a year now, and it's been a fantastic tool for me. Any questions or requests for clarification can be directed at me. I can put together a more detailed guide later, but I hope this is simple enough to do if you already know how to use a forum
I hope this helps some of you get your files online more easily and efficiently! It's also a fantastic application for those of us with more than one computer.
