Comments on: It's too big for email, what do I do now?

Question: It's too big for email, what do I do now?

letitrain — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 16:38:58 -0800

I'm looking for a simple web FTP interface to allow clients to upload files to my web server. I'm using Dreamhost, so it has to be installable on standard Apache / PHP / MySQL, etc. I'd like to have a simple "upload file" area in the client's section where they choose 1-3 files and click "upload."

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 17:03:34 -0800

It isn't an FTP client, but I've used FileThingie for simple uploads. It's extremely simple to install, and provides nice little features that the linked page explains well.

By: Mr T

Mr T — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 17:25:31 -0800

Just write your own, look up multi-part forms. Make sure you sanitize your users input.

By: Roger Dodger

Roger Dodger — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 21:01:04 -0800

Mr T is right. If you can program in PHP it is rather straight forward. Reference material and some sample code. Here is a tutorial which lays it out step by step.

By: lunarboy

lunarboy — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 21:19:14 -0800

YouSendIt.com is a good resource to transfer files up to 1GB from one person to another. And it's free!

By: letitrain

letitrain — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 21:51:48 -0800

I can't program in PHP, but I can follow directions and I'm comfortable working with web inards, so I'll give it a shot. I still have to believe there is a simple solution out there that requires only configuration...

lunarboy, I'm not interested in external solutions. I want to integrate this into the client section of my site.

By: AndrewStephens

AndrewStephens — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 23:39:20 -0800

If you and your users don't mind a Java applet, I wrote a small tool to do this for a friend's website. It is designed to be as fool proof as possible and can be locked down to only upload to specific directories via easy to use parameters. It uploads using standard FTP, no server support is required.
You can view a demo of it here. If you are interested, email me (my address is on the my homepage) and I can send you the documentation.
It's free to use.

By: miniape

miniape — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 06:54:11 -0800

File Thingie is super easy to set up. Only allows one file at a time though. I'm sure there are equivalent options for multiple uploads or look at how this one works and make changes. Maybe try one of these.

By: scruss

scruss — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 07:20:55 -0800

I'd caution against writing your own. I worked at a webshop once that had an upload tool attached to their forums. The images were supposed to be held at a hard-to-find URL until they were approved by a moderator.

A user worked out where the images were going, and we ended up with 70GB of Chinese porn on our website in a matter of hours.

(I should point out that porn was not our core business ...)

By: Sharcho

Sharcho — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 09:20:27 -0800

I use net2ftp. Note that in many cases PHP puts limits on the maximum upload size.

By: blag

blag — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 15:16:08 -0800

Have a look at Owl Ultralite - it's a cut-down version of the full Owl document storage software and might be perfect for you. Bottom of the page.