Tuesday, August 24, 2010

PDF Hosting

Mr. Remakre left a comment in yesterday's Arkham Sanitarium Update that I wanted to discuss:

"Will all of these paper props be made available for download...Scribd is less than helpful unless you sign up ect. I'd like to download these props without subscribing or signing into anything.... "


I use Scribd because it's the only free document hosting service I'm familiar with. If anyone has a better alternative that doesn't require signups I would be more than happy to use it. Heck, you don't need me to do it- the Creative Commons license gives you the right to copy and disseminate the files any way you want as long as it's free.

One alternative that I have considered is bundling everything together in a torrent. The only drawback I can see there is making sure the bundle is kept up to date as new documents are added.

As always, your suggestions are appreciated.

Update: I'm going to continue using Scribd for printable props for now, simply because they're free and I like the preview feature of their document viewer. To address the concerns of people that don't want to sign up for an account with Scribd I'll also be archiving the PDFs with Google Documents. Beyond that you're free to redistribute the files any way you like on a non-commercial basis.

10 comments:

GG said...

You could use dropbox.com, which gives you 2 GB of storage free - if you sign up using my referral link then we'd both get an extra 250 MB storage on there too ;)

The referral link is: http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTg3Mjc0ODI5

Doc said...

You could always upload them to The Internet Archive (archive.org). They'll let you upload documents with Creative Commons licensing, and they're free.

Rev. Marx said...

I too have shied away from downloading several items that I would have liked to have downloaded due to not wanting to sign up for Scribd.

I assume that since you are not hosting the files yourself, that you do not have a web space with which to do so. I have several websites and an unlimited storage and bandwidth package with my hosting provider. I would be happy to donate space for you either as a mirror, or even to set you up with an ftp account on my server for direct linking. Contact me if you would like me to do so.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps dropbox is an option.

Anonymous said...

If you have less than 2 gigs worth of data you might consider using 'dropbox'. It's free, and you can control what's totally public, or share only certain items.

PhilO said...

The fact that you also use Scribed makes it super convenient for me, since I have already signed up.

I can understand how one might hesitate to sign up for lots of services, but it seems that Scribed is the preferred free hosting site among the paper-propmakers that I follow.

Free hosting without registration seems to be a rarity and the benefits of Scribed (for me) outweigh the negatives.

Devi said...

Signing up for Scribd is no big deal. It is a bit annoying to download things, but it's a free service and those teeny tiny hurdles you have to go through keep it free. You can just connect with your Facebook account if you have one, too.

I'm all for whatever is easiest for you. You're the one making this stuff and putting it up for free. Thanks for that :)

Unknown said...

Google Docs also offers document hosting for free, and it's easy to use.

Anonymous said...

I signed up for scribd because of this website. It was easy, and I haven't regretted it at all. I use the same email addy I use for all signups, not my personal one.

I find the format easy to follow, and have been considering using it to put my pdf's on for some other endeavors.

Torrents would be a pain.

Unknown said...

Wgat about Google Documents, you can set the permission setting for your document so that you can make them private, of available for anyone. Best thing is its totally free.