How to Create a Filehosting Website
Creating a file hosting website is a fairly straight forward process, but does need intermediate to advanced programming knowledge and experience. The possibilities of creating a file hosting website are endless, since you can allow for specific file types like images, similar to the Flickr photo service, or coding-related files, like Github. You can decide to charge for your file hosting service or just limit access to your friends and family.
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Instructions
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Decide the types of files your file hosting website will store. You can store any file type or get very specific, like images, MP3 audio, video or documents.
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Pick a reliable data center or web server company to host your services and files. Most hosting companies will give you the option between a Windows or Linux based operating system.
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Choose the main programming language of your website. There are multiple choices available, including PHP, Python, Ruby on Rails and ASP. Part of this choice depends on your web servers. For example, ASP or Active Server Pages is a server-side scripting language available on Windows operating systems only.
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Program the back-end system for your file hosting website. This should include the basic functionality of uploading, storing, listing and retrieving a file.
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Setup your databases to store information related to the uploaded files on the server. You can choose from many different database systems, but the most common and easily scalable for web applications is MySQL.
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Program the user interface (UI) functions. The UI should include a way for a new user to register for your file hosting service, login and logout, upload files, view a list of uploaded content and any other features you want on your site.
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Customize the UI with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), remembering user design and usability. Simplicity and style is important in creating a well-designed front-end user interfaces.
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Test the website thoroughly. Use the file hosting website in different web browsers, from different computers if possible, uploading multiple files after different times of the day. In the testing phase, try to break the website. Look for coding errors and website bugs.
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Launch your file hosting website to small group of users. Allow the users to give you feedback and report problems. When ready, launch your website on a larger scale.
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Tips & Warnings
Static or cloud-based file storage are two types of file storage. A good example of cloud storage is Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3).
References
Resources
- Photo Credit rackmount server farm datacenter image by Adryn from Fotolia.com
