Zipped file to host problem.

[goldengob]

Hi

Ok, what I'm trying to do is send a zipped file to my host for download to my customers. The problem I am having is that the file being a picture story book contains a lot of jpegs. This makes the file 24.0MB in size. Only having a slow 56kps connection, I keep getting a session time out from the host before the file has managed to upload. I've tried to upload it in sections and then zip it but there dosen't seem to be any option at my host to be able to do this.

I am still new to this business, and a lot of things I do are trial and error.

My question is; Is there any way that I can get customers to extract the file from my puter instead of bothering with the host.

Can anyone please share any ideas about how I might get around this.

Much appreciated!

[benevolent001]

Well my first thought to this is that there is no use of zipping jpeg files they remain pretty of same size before and after zipiing isnt it?

Secondy if you have slow connection then you should try sending images in group of 5 and upload in your space at server as the file size is big and connections is slow so you are geting time out..the only solutions seems to me try loading pictures in smaller groups may be 5 -8 such that it doesnt increase 4-%mb size in a group

Hope this would help u
Regards and best wishes

[goldengob]

Ok

Yes I can do that. But once they are all uploaded, I need to make them available collectively as a download to my customers. How would I do that?

[benevolent001]

then u may put all of them in one folder and give address to your client to download from that address like u just give them http:// address it would be lot easier for you and client

[goldengob]

Yeah I tried that, but when you try and download a folder from host, customer gets Parent Directory screen rather than download box, if you know what I mean.

[benevolent001]

yes your customer will see all those files in the folder and he can save them by

right clicking
and choosing save taget as

in the hard disk of his computer this will download one file and he will have to download all like this

[encyclo]

If you are looking to distribute the collection as one file, then using a ZIP is a reasonable idea even, as benevolent001 has already mentioned, there will be very little size advantage as JPG images are already compressed. What other kinds of files are in the package apart from the images?

Your upload problem, however, will be replicated for the users wishing to download your file: those on dialup wil have a hard time completing a 24Mb download as it would take several hours at least, and if serving over HTTP rather than via FTP, one break in the connection and they would have to start again.

For uploading the file, check out the "resume" function in your FTP client: that should allow you to continue the upload where you left off if the connection times out. For downloading, there is little you can do for dialup users unless they are technically proficient - in which case, you could offer the download on an anonymous FTP server (ask your hosting company), or another perhaps more interesting option would be to publish a BitTorrent tracker and your users could use a BitTorrent client such as Azureus to download the file.