Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Web Hosting Tutorials : ~File Hosting Guide~

[Vicious]

Guide and steps to set-up a full functional file hosting site:-

Decide the formats 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.[jpg,png,txt and more]
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.

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.You can hire a web freelancer to help you on scripting.

Program the back-end system for your file hosting website. This should include the basic functionality of uploading,
storing,saving to desktop, listing and retrieving a file.

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.

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.

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.

Test the website thoroughly before releasing it to public. Use the file hosting website in different web browsers such as Fire Fox,IE, Opera, Safari,Google Chrome and also trying out from different computers if possible, uploading multiple files after different times of the day. In the testing phase, try to break the website[Hack your own website]. Look for coding errors and website bugs.

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 by advertising to many related sector for example road billboard,local area advertisement,newspaper, and many other ways. You can also set up affiliates for referrals payout or something that give a gain to a person recommend your site to others [fair & square].

This is the only and 1 way to have a successive file hosting site.

[HostYourIdea]

Pretty self explanatory, but useful to file for later. Thanks.

[Serverfruit-Kris]

It is a good checklist, however, I do believe that this is about general for every site with a few variations of course.

Maybe you should have found or written some guides that go in little more details and link to them.

For example how you can find a good programmer. How you can choose between all the programmers you find.

You could have something about what the advantages / disadvantages are of Windows vs. Linux.

Overall a good guide, but a little more details might help.

[Myelin]

How to deal with illegal file uploads?

[morrisonhosting]

It's vague but also useful for all web development / design. I would also like to see your ideas on correctly handling illegal file uploads and infringement as that is a major part of file hosting.

-Tyler Morrison