Premium Members: How to Get FTP Access [FAQ]
 

One of the benefits of being a Premium Member is the ability to upload sample files to our servers. Sample files are often the difference between guessing at what's wrong with your videos/photos/files, and knowing what's wrong with your videos/photos/files. While attaching files to posts is preferred, we understand that not everything can be shown within 99mb of space.


How to Gain Access

Send a private message (PM) to admin, requesting some FTP space. Answer the following questions:

• How much space is needed?
• What is your IP address? If you don't know what it is, click this link.
• And is your IP address static? If you don't know, then in all likelihood it is not. You'd know if you had one.

And, of course, you need to be a Premium Member. Not too complicated at all. :)


Security Notes

We will generate all usernames and passwords ourselves, in order to verify complexity and conform to username conventions.

In the unlikely event that somebody is a troublemaker with ideas, realize that the FTP space is

• on a completely different server than this site,
• on a jailed account that lacks the ability to run scripts or execute files,
• on a folder that lacks any public access outside of FTP,
• and scanned by a triple pass of anti-malware/anti-exploit software on the server, at time of upload.

Furthermore, we'll manually verify each file before moving it to the publicly available CDN folders, or to our local network.

We do give out direct public CDN FTP access to some our more established long-time community members, in order to aid them in their video research (which they share with us here on the forum). Existing members in good standing are welcome to request such access, though it's usually the other way around, where we contact members and offer long-term access.


Why Bother with FTP Uploads?

For security reasons, understand that FTP is one of the few ways in which Site Staff will accept samples submissions from forum members.

Site Staff will only download files (from forum members) from one of four places:

• Files uploaded to our own FTP servers.
• Files attached to posts here in the digitalFAQ.com forums.
• Files uploaded to personal/company websites, non-FTP, accessible via http port 80, and assuming speeds are decent.
• Files shared with Dropbox, though that may change in the future.

Although there are many ways to share large files online, most of them are a nuisance.

• The image hosting sites like ImageShack and Photobucket eventually delete your images, which is no good.
• The video sharing sites like Youtube and Vimeo re-encode your content to their format, which is no good.
• And the file sharing sites like Mediafire, Rapidshare and others have silly countdown timers, "free software" garbage payloads, and the infrequent exploited ad that can infect visiting computers. Also no good.

All in all, the "free" options are not free to us -- they cost us time.


Thanks for understanding our tech Q&A policies. :cool:

This post reserved.

I was tired of the firewall filling up with bogus login attempts (from Turkey, Romania, Iran, etc), so the port has been changed from the default 21. Security by obscurity is always a good start!

Existing FTP users: PM admin for the new port assignment.

Explicit TLS encryption (not implicit TLS) is also now required, and is no longer just optional. No more logins "in the clear". If you're not sure what this all means, it honestly does not matter. It's just another little checkbox or dropdown option in your favorite FTP program. Both login information (username/password) and data is sent encrypted.

You may get a certificate warning, if connecting via the older cdn4 address or via IP.

That is all. :)