Advice please - ftp option,

[Damo77]

Hi everyone,

I'm considering setting myself up a little business providing image retouching for publishers and designers. (I'd love to be self-employed, but gee it's hard to take that leap - especially with a family and a mortgage!)

Anyway, obviously I'd need a way for clients to send me their files. Presently when people send me just one or two images, I tell them to use mailbigfile.com or yousendit.com. That's ok for single files, but not practical for multiple files.

What options are out there for me? Do I need to set up my own FTP server, or are there web-based solutions?

(For really big batches, I'd insist on a disk, of course)

Thanks,

Damo.

[dj]

Hi Damo77

I resisted setting up a ftp server at Printcraft because of security issues. Setting up ftp on Linux was too difficult and ftp on Windows led to Trojan attacks on my Windows 2000 server.

So I had a tantrum and set up a CGI script on our web site so that customers could submit files through our web site.

Then we had a customer who insisted on sending her files via ftp (arrrgh!). Finally I took up the recommendation of another printer in town and bought a copy of CrushFTP.

(www.crushftp.com).

It works fantastic, it's dirt cheap ($50) and it runs on Mac. If I had installed crushftp first instead off goofing around with the other alternatives, I would have saved myself about 30 hours of hair pulling.

[pcmodem]

I would recommend [Rumpus|http://www.maxum.com/Rumpus/] . It has a nice interface to it, runs on OSX 10.5, has email notification, and is simple to install. There is even a Fully functioning 30 day demo available and if you like it you can purchase a code and make your demo a registered version.

Brian

[mattbeals]

Use PureFTPd. It's free, light weight and works great. You can even link it up with MySQL and PAM for more sophisticated user authentication. It's stupid simple, really is super simple... And it's free. It will run on just about Mac OS X installation, even on an old blue & white G3, 128MB of RAM and OS X 10.3.

[neotrog]

Outsource it. Running an FTP server from the same machine you are trying to use for graphic editing is probably a bad idea.

If you don't think outsource will work consider getting an all in one appliance off e-bay. You can get some slightly used Cobalt Raqs. for pretty short money. It'll provide a web presence, e-mail and ftp from a pretty simple GUI. Don't spend more than $300 though. They are way obsolete and if it dies it'll likely stay dead.