benwillies.com

How to Upload Files

Here are the steps you will need to complete before you can upload any files. Yes, it is perfectly fine for you to use this site for publishing your photos and if it isn't, I will let you know.

Enable Cookies and Javascript

Check your browser and make sure it will support javascript and accept cookies from this site. If you are using Internet Explorer, changing your Privacy setting to MEDIUM HIGH will do it, which you can find in the Security tab of Internet Options in the Tools menu.

Register an Account

Click Register on the Login page. Your browser will tell you something about not liking the security certificate from this site and ask if you want to proceed. Internet Explorer will even try to scare you into believing something will be installed on your computer, but this is totally bogus and you should click the Install button anyway because nothing is going to be installed.

The reason why this is happening is because I do not want to pay $100 a year just so your browser will automatically accept my certificate. If it gives you the option, go ahead and tell it to always trust the certificate from this site and you won't see this message again.

Fill out the Form

Enter something into every box on the "Register New Account" page. Although it is called an Account, there is absolutely no charge to use this site and as you can see, you will not be entering any credit card numbers or any other identifying information, and except for your email address, you can enter anything you want in any box, but you will have to remember what you entered later, so make it simple.

Your first and last name will only be seen by the Webmaster, but your Username will be seen by everyone, so it probably should be something obvious that your family and friends and will recognize. And please remember that whoever knows your password will be able to delete all your files and folders or do something worse, so you should probably not use any word or combination of words you could find in a dictionary.

Acknowledge the Confirmation Email

After submitting the "New Account" form, an email will be sent to the address you specified, so make doubly-sure it is absolutely correct. It usually takes less than 10 minutes for you to receive this email, but it has been known to take as long as 30 minutes, so please be patient. When you get it, just click the link inside the message and it will return you to this site with a fully activated account.

If for some reason the link does not work, then copy and paste it into the address bar of your browser and be sure to include all those letters and numbers after the "confirm_key". If all else fails, please contact Technical Support and within 24 hours, your account will be ready to go.

Login

When you return to the site, click Login and enter your Username and Password exactly as you originally entered it on the "New Account" form. If it says your Username or Password is invalid, then click Reset and your Username and a new Password will be sent to you, provided your email address is correct. If all else fails, please contact Technical Support and within 24 hours, you will be able to login.

Create a Folder

Go to the Files section and decide where you want to put your files. It may be possible to upload your photos into another User's folder, but then that other User might move them or delete them or rename them, so we recommend creating your own folder by clicking "New Folder" next to the red cross at the top of the Directory. On the "New Folder" page, enter the name of your folder, keeping in mind that this is how your family and friends are going to find your files.

And make sure that "Parent Folder" is set to "-- NONE --" so that your new folder will be visible without having to open any other folders, meaning you want to create a folder and not a subfolder. Leave the "Access Privileges" set to "Limited". Click the Submit button and wait until the screen is refreshed and you will see your new folder suddenly appear in the Directory!

Check the Access Privileges

Since you specified that your new folder would have Limited Access Privileges, the next page that automatically appears is telling you what other people will be able to do with the files in your folder, which is that everybody on the planet will be able to look at any picture you put into this folder but that only you can make any changes to the folder itself or the files inside it, which is exactly what we want.

The whole subject of Access Privileges is very complicated and since the people who are going to want to see your photos are probably not going to want to register an account, the default privileges are best for now.

Upload a File

Now click the Upload File button above the Directory and the "Upload New File" page will be displayed. Click the Browse button (or the "Choose File" button if you have Safari) and find a picture on your hard drive. By clicking on the dropdown list where it says "Folder", you can see all the folders where you could possibly upload a file, but for now, be sure to select the folder you just created above. Now click the Upload button near the bottom of the page and in about a minute you should see your photo.

If you see an error about the "File Name" being invalid, just change it then click the Browse button again and find the same file as before and this time it should work.

Finding Your Files

Naturally, you could just click one of your folders in the Directory to see what's inside, but later on, when you have lots of files in lots of folders and you want to locate something in particular, try searching instead by opening up the dropdown list where it says "Any File" and select "My Files" then click the Go button. If you then enter something into "Search Criteria" it will only search through your files. Notice that it also works for "My Folders".

Organizing Your Files

Make subfolders. Although you can upload as many files as you want into a folder, we find that about 50-60 files is optimum, which is about 10 pages of results. Any more than that and most people will give up before they see everything in a folder. And if "Show All" is clicked, it won't take forever to load the page. By creating subfolders within your main folder, it also makes it easier for visitors to skip the photos they might have already seen.

To create a subfolder, just open up the dropdown list where it says "Parent Folder" on the "New Folder" page and select one of your folders instead of "-- NONE --" and your new folder will be created inside it. You can also rearrange your existing folders by changing the parent folder.

The default sort order of files in the index is alphabetical, but by prefixing a number, you can arrange your photos in any order. Whenever a search is requested, not only the name but also the description of a file is checked, so you may want to add some comments to make it easier to find similar photos later. An example might be to enter the word "beach" into the Description so that a search for "beach" would still find a file name called "Venice Shopping Spree".

Downsizing

A nice thing about this web site is that you can upload your photos at their original size, which for most digital cameras is about 1600x1200 pixels or even larger. This is perfect for desktop backgrounds because smaller pictures will have to be enlarged to fill the screen and the quality really suffers as a result. On the other hand, large pictures take a lot more time to download and take up lots more disk space on the server, so you might consider scaling down your pictures, either as you upload them or sometime later, by selecting one of the reduced sizes in the dropdown list on the "Edit File Information" page.

Overall, we have found that the "Large (1080x768)" size has worked the best, particularly for the dialup visitors. But once a picture is reduced, it cannot be enlarged and the only way to restore it to a larger size would be to upload it again, so before changing the scale, you might consider duplicating or downloading the file first.

One More Thing

Remember that you can change anything at any time, even your Username! You should never have to delete and re-create any form just to change something, like where a folder or file should be located. Instead just go to the appropriate form page and change the data in the boxes to be what you want. However, keep in mind that there is no "undo" button, so that once you click the Save button, the old information will be lost. And please be aware that if you change your email address, another confirmation letter will be sent and you will not be able to login again until it is acknowledged, so be very careful when changing your email address.

And please don't forget to contact the Webmaster for help if you think you might be doing something wrong because we want you to enjoy the site and sometimes it is not you but the site that is not working properly and we need to know that. We want things to work as you would expect it to work so the basic trick to using the site is to not think too much and just try it!


Advertisement