Hosting files

This guide is for players who wish to host data or image files, but do not have web space of their own to do so.

= Free Webhosts = The first step to get a file posted to the internet is to have access to a web hosting service. There are a number of these available, some which require subscriptions, and others which do not but are filled with advertisements or some other type of revenue-generating system. Note that no endorsement of any particular service or company is intended by this article.

Once you have chosen a service, go ahead and create an account. Generally, you will be required to enter a valid email address, so any registration information can be sent to you, and you can confirm that you actually requested that account.

= Freewebs.com = The following is an example of how this process works, using freewebs.com as the file hosting service.

First, head to freewebs.com. If you already have an account for this service, skip to Uploading Files. Otherwise, click the Start Now icon to begin the process of setting up a new account.

Choose your account name and password, and read those Terms and Conditions, so you don't get in trouble or have things deleted, or your account terminated. You will probably want to read the Terms and Conditions in a new window, because merely clicking on the link winds up dumping what you just typed in for your password.

If all goes well, you will be taken to yet another terms screen before being presented with a choice of Account Modes. If you're comfortable with HTML, or just want to throw some files out there and don't care about an actual web page, choose HTML mode. Otherwise, choose Easy Mode. For this example, HTML mode was chosen.

Once you get to the Welcome to Freewebs! screen, enter your account (for the first time!) You will see a menu of six boxes--choose Build and Edit to get started. Now you can upload your files!

= Uploading Files = In the Site Manager screen, click on upload a file, browse to your file, and upload it. You will see it pop up on your "All Files" tab, and, depending on what type of file it is, in another tab. Scene Editor files are stored as .XML files, and will show up under Other.

= Referencing Files = To link to these files you just uploaded, you will want to right click on the file name as it appears in your File Manager screen, and copy the link location/shortcut. Then, when you post it in the YPP forums, you can either paste it directly into your text, or use: [url= http://www.freewebs.com/youraccountnamehere/filename.XML ].

If you're linking to pictures, then in the YPP forum post use the following format: [img= http://www.freewebs.com/youraccountnamehere/filename.png ].

= External Links =
 * Image Hosting services
 * egoshare.com free 100 MB file hosting
 * freewebs.com free 40 MB file hosting
 * Free Image, File, & Video Hosting, File Hosting with bookmarks and tags.
 * tinypic.com free image and video hosting