Neowster.com

What is file hosting? Do you know when you are attaching a file to your email you are in fact uploading the file to either Yahoo / Hotmail / Gmail for it to be hosted on their server (i.e the file is kept by email companies). When your mail recipient receives your email, he clicks on your attachment and downloads the file from the company server.

There’s noting wrong with emailing files to friends, but the disadvantages are obvious.

1. Large files are notoriously difficult to send due to the constant break in the link, forcing you to re-attach again, wasting precious time.
2. Once your file is attached to an email, it can only be downloaded by email recipients.
3. You have no central management over all the files you ever uploaded as attachments.
4. Uploaded files are less “reusable” causing time loss in re-uploading these files.

With regards to all the disadvantages, file hosting is your solution. It provides:

1. A interface for you to upload files, showing you the full progress and verifies the file integrity.
2. Once uploaded, you can set it public and EVERYONE can download the file indefinitely from a simple “link”, which points to the file location. You just need to email / text / write them the link.
3. All your hosted files can be centrally managed and categorized for re-usability
4. Finally, and most importantly, large files can be shared between users with ease.

If you’re convinced and like to enjoy all the benefits mentioned above, I highly recommend MediaFire, a free, reliable, and user friendly file hosting site.

Step 1: Sign up for an account

There is no need to sign up for an account in order to upload and host your files on MediaFire. However, if there is no account signup, you will not enjoy the central management of all your uploaded files. Besides, if you don’t have an account and you forget the link of your uploaded file, its impossible to retrieve it from the site. In short, signing up just requires an email and password, takes less than a minute. There shouldn’t be any reason for you not to sign up for an account.

Step 2: upload your files

You should be at the “Upload Files” tab. Here you can choose to upload 1 or 10 files at once by selecting the number of files from the main drop down box. Process is simple and straight forward,  one advantage of medafire is the upload process is displayed in percentage so you are always aware of how long its going to take, or whether it is “hang”.

step 3: manage your files

After you have uploaded your files, click on “My Files” and you will be able to see all the files you have uploaded. You can organize your files into categorized folders by using the action panel on the left of the screen. Move, Delete, Tag, the functions are all there and works as just like your desktop. Just remember to select the files you want to work on by checking the corresponding checkbox.

To share the file with your friends and family, just click on the “Share” button of the file / folder on its right. This will open up a dialogue box containing the ways to share this file. The direct “link” access to this file is the url contained in the red boxed region as highlighted in the picture below.

If most of your uploaded files are pictures, you can change the working interface from “File Manager” to “Photo Gallery”.

conclusion

That’s it. What I ran through is just a mini review of MediaFire. The user interface is extremely easy, so go ahead and explore the various functions. However, do note the following when using MediaFire:

1. Single file size limit of 100mb.
2. MediaFire is not a long term backup solution for your files and digital content.
3. If an uploaded file is not accessed / downloaded for a prolonged period, it may be removed by MediaFire. For more info on their policy, check here.

Hope you find this useful. And please, help yourself and your friends by not sending those 10mb file attachment ever again.