Free File Hosting Made Simple

The day after launching an update as big as this one is always a flurry of bug fixes, close monitoring and very little sleep for the entire team. I’m relieved to say that there have only been a few small glitches to fix and otherwise this launch has gone really smoothly.

There were a couple of bugs that surfaced within the first few hours of launch that have since been addressed. The first issue we were notified of was related to how the old site handled caching of pages and resulted in some users not being able to log in to their accounts or access their new My Files page. Fortunately, this could simply be resolved by forcing your browser to do a full refresh of the page. We’ve since updated the way in which the new site handles caching and it should no longer be an issue.

The one other bug that reared its head during the launch was related to the new Account page not saving your user information correctly. While this doesn’t have any real effect on the performance of the site, it was no doubt a nuisance to anyone trying to change their email address, display name or password. That’s fixed too.

Other than that, the launch went wonderfully and we’re extremely grateful for all the positive feedback you’ve already sent us. In the first day you’ve already given us some great ideas for how to further improve the new site including a couple small feature requests which we’re going to try to implement immediately. We’re going to be making a few small adjustments to the site over the next few days and then start on some more new features so let us know what you want to see next and we’ll get working on it!

Thanks again for all your continued feedback and support,

-Tom

Hey everybody,

We’ve released a new version of MediaFire today which includes a ton of new features inspired by all of the great feedback you’ve send us over the past few months. There are a lot of new features this time so I’ll highlight some of the big ones to help you get started. If you just want to skip to some pictures on our About page or a demo check out our about page or come see some images I’ve uploaded for you all to check out (I’ll upload some more soon too).

Folders:
This is by far the feature you’ve requested most frequently and now it’s here! Not only can you create folders and subfolders to organize your files, you can also share an entire folder of files just as easily as sharing a single file. The new system now makes it possible to create an unlimited number of folders and subfolders for a natural and flexible system of organization that mimics the directory structure of your computer.

Image Hosting:
The second most frequently requested feature has definitely been the ability to view images directly on MediaFire and share them with others. Now you can, and you can also create and share entire galleries of images simply by organizing them into folders by using the new My Files page. Images now have their own page too, with the ability to view various sizes as well as quickly browse through other images in a folder with a fast image slide.

As always, there’s plenty of ways to share files using MediaFire and with Images we’ve provided some useful new tools for embedding them on your blog, My Space page, or any other website. Using the Sharing Tabs that’s are associated with each file you can choose to Email your images, send them by Instant Messenger, or easily generate codes so that you can embed them on almost any website (including your MySpace profile or blog). With several sizes to choose from, MediaFire image hosting gives you the flexibility to fit your images in almost any layout easily as well as giving your friends and family the option to view and save the original image to their computer.

Add Descriptions and Tags to your Files and Folders:
Sometimes file names aren’t quite descriptive enough to let your visitors know what they’re downloading so now we’ve added the ability to give each of your files and folders a description and tags. Combined with the new instant-search feature on the My Files page you can simply click on a file’s tags to find similar files stored within your account.

Save Files Directly to your MediaFire Account:
Don’t have time to wait for that big file to download right now? No problem! Just save them to your My Files page for easy retrieval later on. On any shared page you now have an alternative to downloading files directly to your own computer. Simply by clicking the “Save to My Files” button on any shared page, MediaFire will automatically save a copy of that file to your account. That way if the original uploading user needs to delete that file, you’ll always be able to keep a copy of it for easy rapid access on MediaFire.com.

New My Files page:
All of these new features needed a robust and easy to use management new management page and with the new My Files page organizing and sharing your files is now easier than ever! We’ve entirely rethought and redesigned the My Files page for this update and included a ton of new features. The main goal in the redesign was to give you as much flexibility in storing and sharing your files as possible while keeping the system as simple to use and functional as it’s always been.

We’ve included two viewing modes into the new My Files page to accommodate for easy file management as well as fast and simple image browsing and gallery sharing. While viewing your files in the “File List View” we’ve included all of the most frequently used file management tools at the top left of your file list. Using this menu you can create a new folder, tag selected items, move selected items to a folder, email selected items, delete selected items, show and hide descriptions and tags in the list, and view your account details. Think of the “File List View” as your interface for easily managing your files

Advanced Privacy Control and Sharing Mode Options:
Another new feature we’ve heard requested fairly frequently is the ability to add passwords to protect sensitive files. Since you now have the option of sharing entire folders, we’ve gone one step further and built in a privacy system that allows you to toggle files from public (visible) to private (invisible) in shared folders. Files can also be set to be password protected so that you can ensure that only the intended recipient will receive your important documents. Images can be made private or public however cannot be password protected.

In this update you can now share your files in two different modes, Basic Sharing or Extended Sharing, which can be set from your My Files page or your My Account page. Basic Sharing requires you to share each file with your friends individually even if they are in the same folder. You can NOT share folders in basic sharing mode. This is best if you do not want your recipient to be able to browse any other files that are in the same folder as what you are sending them.

The Extended Sharing mode (which is generally the preferred method) allows your friends to view other files in a folder you share or related to a file you share. For example, if you would like to share a folder of your vacation photos with your friend and family, the Extended Browsing option would allow them to easily navigate through your vacation folder to see all of your pictures rather than just one at at time.

No Accounts Necessary:
While creating an account with MediaFire will allow you to access your files from any computer, an account is not necessary in order to take full advantage of all of the features that MediaFire has to offer. Even without logging in, you can create and share folders of files just as you would with an account. Go ahead, give it a try! If you do not create an account however, the files you upload will only be accessible from the computer from which you uploaded them.

As always, we’re going to be working hard on bringing you even more enhancements and perfecting the operation of the site and we would love to hear what you think so-far. Feel free to drop us an email anytime with your comments and suggestions, we read each and every one of them (I’m sure a lot of you will see your requested features in this new version already).

Cheers!

Tom

Hey all,

This is a quick update to announce that today marks another milestone for MediaFire. We have just officially welcomed our 200,000th member! We’re excited that so many people have already adopted MediaFire as their file hosting solution especially since we announced our first 100,000th member less than three months ago. Despite the pleasant surprise of reaching this goal nearly two months earlier than we expected, we’re still working hard to bring MediaFire a whole new set of features which have also just been released into a private alpha test.

This weekend we’ll be implementing more small tweaks around the site to further accommodate for these new features and to keep pace with this phenomenal growth. There will also be a rolling maintenance period this evening between 8:00PM and 12:00AM (CST) which may result in a short period of down time for the site as we bring more servers online. With these changes and new hardware in place the increase in download, upload, and general page loading speeds should be significantly noticeable.

Thanks again everyone, especially to all of those who have been sending us their insightful feedback! We couldn’t do it without you.

Cheers!

Tom
The MediaFire Team

As I briefly mentioned in the last post, we’re doing a series of upgrades to MediaFire’s infrastructure this week as well as some additional minor upgrades next week. Yesterday’s maintenance marked the first in this series as we took MediaFire offline to install some new high-end networking hardware and upgrade our database servers.

Unfortunately, this upgrade took much longer than we anticipated due to a faulty piece of said high-end networking hardware failing shortly after installation. Everything is up and running again however we will need to take the site down for a little while today to finalize the installation. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience the prolonged outage may have caused you. We’re working around the clock to ensure that this does not happen again and future maintenance is performed with the absolute minimum possible impact to the site’s functionality.

Although we still have a few other scheduled upgrades (which may include some brief downtime) to perform over the next few days, most should be fairly transparent to the user experience and should not interrupt the service for any prolonged periods of time.

So what do all these upgrades mean for MediaFire? Essentially it means we’re in the process of gearing up to launch some of your most frequently requested new features, so check back here within the next couple weeks for a more exciting update.

In the meantime, I’ll keep you all informed about how things are going with the upgrade as it continues. And as always, if you happen to find any new bugs you want us to squash, or if you have any last minute comments or suggestions for the next feature roll-out, drop us a message over on the contact page.

Tom
The MediaFire Team

Hey everyone,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted so I’m taking a quick break from development to bring up something that we’ve received a lot of email questions about; “is MediaFire reliable enough to use as a backup solution?”

We’re glad to hear that a lot of people choose MediaFire because it’s the easiest and fastest way to host files and share them with others. One of the more transparent features of MediaFire is the reliability of the system that’s running everything behind the scenes. While we currently do not recommend MediaFire as a backup solution per-se, one of the things that helps make MediaFire one of the most reliable file distribution systems is the fact that we actually keep two copies of all your files on our servers at all times.

That might sound like a crazy thing for a free service to provide but we’re obsessive about network performance here at MediaFire. This redundancy helps keep your valuable data accessible even in the rare event that one of our servers or drives happens to go down for a bit. In such an event MediaFire automatically reroutes your downloaders to the available server which provides an almost interruptible download source for all your file distribution needs. Is it still possible that a file might still be temporarily inaccessible? Of course there’s always a chance that two servers with the same file might take a break at the same time… but the chances are extremely low, and even if they do we’re working on a solution for that too.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to bring up one exception to this rule… our scheduled maintenance periods. We’re actually going to be performing a few of these over the next couple weeks and although we do our best to schedule these during off-peak hours, I apologize if this is going to cause any inconvenience. We will of course throw up the usual warning message across the site several hours before any of these upgrades.

Alright back to work

- Tom

Now that the file distribution system is running rock-solid, fast and with plenty of room for growth we finally get to move on to some of the fun (and important) features like Account Management.

With the addition of the My Account page you now have the ability to do basic things like update your email address, change your password, and see an overview of your account activity. Some of the other optional fields on the account page will play a more important role in the future as development continues and as always any personal information will remain private and secure unless you choose to share it. One such option that’s now available on your My Account page is the field labeled “Display Name.” Your MediaFire display name has to be unique so make sure you grab the name of your choice early and hold on to it for later.

To access your new My Account page, simply log-in to MediaFire and click your email address in the top right of the page once it shows up. Check it out and let us know what you think!

Tom
The MediaFire Team

The MediaFire community is now officially over 100,000 registered users strong with millions more enjoying the service without registration. We thought we’d take this moment to thank everyone for helping us get this far and reassure you all that this is still just the beginning. Just after reaching the 100,000 user mark last night, we rolled out yet another round of system upgrades and it looks like they’ve made significant increase in performance across the site. Pages should be loading noticeably faster now. Also by your request we’ve implemented some better error reporting that should help identify some problems that might occur during the upload process.

We read every email that comes in and I’ll continue to do my best to respond to as many as possible. As always, feel free to drop us a message, we’d love to hear your feedback about the site and any suggestions you might have about how we can continue to improve the service.

Cheers!

Tom
The MediaFire Team

Hi everyone,

Last week marked the 3rd month of our very successful beta test. Thanks to the widespread adoption of our service and all of the great feedback from our users we’ve given the system a thorough test run and optimized a great deal of the distribution network for speed and reliability.

Over the course of these first three months we have been testing the feasibility of offering an unlimited file size with our free service. In an effort to continue supporting the growing MediaFire user base and meet as many people’s needs as possible, we have decided to limit the maximum file size to 100MB. The total number of files and total storage space per account will remain unlimited. The 100mb upload limit will take effect immediately and on Monday, February 5th Monday, February 12th at 12:00 AM CST all files over 100MB currently on MediaFire will be removed from the hosting system. If you have any files hosted on MediaFire that exceed 100mb please take this opportunity to either delete them from your My Files page or download a copy before the removal date.

We greatly appreciate everyone’s support and feedback during this beta and we’re confident that these changes will allow us to continue to offer the best free file hosting experience.

Update: By popular request, we’re extending the deadline for downloading or removing files over 100MB another week to Monday, February 12th at 12:00AM CST.

Tom
The MediaFire Team

MediaFire’s data distribution system is second to none, and with a few upgrades it’s running faster than ever. Last week we made some significant server upgrades that will allow us to further expand the features we’ll be offering in the future. Unfortunately as it is with most beta websites, such a large upgrade didn’t come without its new bugs to fix. Over the course of last week we’ve made some final adjustments to the software that should clear up most of the remaining issues that some users were experiencing.

Fortunately everything is running great now and we can get back to the fun stuff – developing new features to help you share all your files faster than ever and in new and exciting ways. You should notice significant performance increases throughout the site especially where it counts - during file transfers. As always, drop us and email with your suggestions and feedback. We read every one of them and we greatly appreciate your support.
Cheers!

Tom
The MediaFire Team

Well, we weren’t around for too much of 2006 but none the less, it was a great year for MediaFire and we’d like to wish all our users a Happy New Year!

As MediaFire celebrates the beginning of its fourth month of burning the web with the fastest file sharing service available we’d just like to take this opportunity to thank the community that helped MediaFire become one of the top 600 websites on the internet in only three months! We’re looking forward to a new year with many exciting new developments and we hope you’re enjoying some of the new features we’ve already made available at your request. We will continue to do our best to keep MediaFire the most simple to use and most powerful file hosting and distribution resource on the web.

We hope everyone had a fun and safe New Years Eve and wish you all the best in 2007!

Cheers!