This post will solve one of the main problems faced by Bloggers working on Blogger platform, i.e. to hotlink CSS/JavaScript (.js) files within their templates.
Direct Linking or Hotlinking
Whenever you upload a file to a file hosting site, a download link is given to you to share the file with others. But there are mainly two ways in which the file can be downloaded.
Let’s say you uploaded a file “X” to example.com
And your blog/website is abc-xyz.com
Now if your readers can download that “X” file directly from a link present on your website (abc-xyz.com), then it is called hotlinking/direct linking. But if they have to visit example.com to download that particular “X” file (like in case of Rapidshare/MegaUpload etc.) then these download links are not considered as hotlinks/direct links.
Hotlink providers
These websites allow you to upload almost any file and get a direct link to that file. This post compares the following file hosts providing hotlinking facility: MyDataNest, SigMirror, BoxSTr, FileDen and HotLinkFiles.
This table will help you to select the best service out of the above listed free hosting providers.
Why you should NOT use HotLinkFiles.com?
First of all, their servers go down frequently (so all the uploaded files go missing too). This is very annoying as your website/blog may stop loading due to these errors. So when selecting a file hosting server, make sure they guarantee 99.9% uptime.
Secondly there are several complaints against HotLinkFiles, for containing harmful malware, Trojans and lots of spyware. You may read about this at AboutUs.org and at MyWot.com
Why NOT BOXSTr.com and FileDen.com?
JavaScript files are used in most of the widgets and hacks. But at these websites, no direct linking/hotlinking facility is provided for your JavaScript (.js) files. Moreover according to their TOU:
To maintain a stable system and provide the highest level of storage for all members, accounts that have been inactive for 30 days will have their files removed. As long as you keep an active account your files will never get deleted, regardless to size or usage.
Why NOT Google Pages/Google Sites?
Google has already decided to close their GooglePages service.
And in case of Google Sites, other than having a not-so user-friendly UI, they never disclose their allowed bandwidth. And when the (undisclosed) bandwidth is exceeded, of course the files become inaccessible.
BOX.net - something different...
Although Box.net allows its "free users" to place a widget on their blogs, through which their visitors can easily download all the files, but it is definitely not hotlinking as it requires a widget which is based on flash/javascript. BOX.net does allow hotlinking of files, but it is limited to premium customers only.
The Winner!
Therefore the selected file host service from the list above is MyDataNest.com (and also SigMirror.com).
I would recommend you to register and use both these websites.
MyDataNest.com offers better file management system, with the option to create many folders and sub-folders to organize your files, with download statistics against each shared file.
As most of the files which are needed to be hotlinked are usually JavaScript/CSS files, so diskspace of anything more than 1GB will suffice, but bandwidth requirements may change anytime for any blog/website with increasing popularity and MyDataNest provides maximum bandwidth (20GB/month) among the above listed websites.
So give your first preference to MyDataNest and keep a back up of all your files at SigMirror.
Finally store all the direct links used in your blog/website in a text file on your PC.
Although you may try and use their free service for as long as you want, but if you think you need more space and bandwidth then have a look on their premium plans too. All the readers of BloggerStop will straight away get a discount of 50% on any of the listed premium plans (for the first year), by using the coupon code – BLOGGERSTOP
So from now onwards, wherever you require DIRECT LINKS in my tutorials, upload your files to MyDataNest
Direct Linking or Hotlinking
Whenever you upload a file to a file hosting site, a download link is given to you to share the file with others. But there are mainly two ways in which the file can be downloaded.
Let’s say you uploaded a file “X” to example.com
And your blog/website is abc-xyz.com
Now if your readers can download that “X” file directly from a link present on your website (abc-xyz.com), then it is called hotlinking/direct linking. But if they have to visit example.com to download that particular “X” file (like in case of Rapidshare/MegaUpload etc.) then these download links are not considered as hotlinks/direct links.
Hotlink providers
These websites allow you to upload almost any file and get a direct link to that file. This post compares the following file hosts providing hotlinking facility: MyDataNest, SigMirror, BoxSTr, FileDen and HotLinkFiles.
This table will help you to select the best service out of the above listed free hosting providers.
Websites >> | MyDataNest | SigMirror | Boxstr | FileDen | HotLinkFiles |
Features | |||||
Storage | 2 GB | 2.5 GB | 5 GB | 1 GB | 1 GB |
Bandwidth/Mo | 20 GB | 7 GB | 1 GB / Day | 5 GB | 8GB |
HotLinking | Allowed | Allowed | Not Allowed For .js Files | Not Allowed For .js Files | Allowed |
Files Allowed | All | Almost All | .js Files Not Allowed | Allowed | |
Uptime | 99% | 99% | 99% | 99% | Goes down frequently |
Why you should NOT use HotLinkFiles.com?
First of all, their servers go down frequently (so all the uploaded files go missing too). This is very annoying as your website/blog may stop loading due to these errors. So when selecting a file hosting server, make sure they guarantee 99.9% uptime.
Secondly there are several complaints against HotLinkFiles, for containing harmful malware, Trojans and lots of spyware. You may read about this at AboutUs.org and at MyWot.com
Why NOT BOXSTr.com and FileDen.com?
JavaScript files are used in most of the widgets and hacks. But at these websites, no direct linking/hotlinking facility is provided for your JavaScript (.js) files. Moreover according to their TOU:
To maintain a stable system and provide the highest level of storage for all members, accounts that have been inactive for 30 days will have their files removed. As long as you keep an active account your files will never get deleted, regardless to size or usage.
Why NOT Google Pages/Google Sites?
Google has already decided to close their GooglePages service.
And in case of Google Sites, other than having a not-so user-friendly UI, they never disclose their allowed bandwidth. And when the (undisclosed) bandwidth is exceeded, of course the files become inaccessible.
BOX.net - something different...
Although Box.net allows its "free users" to place a widget on their blogs, through which their visitors can easily download all the files, but it is definitely not hotlinking as it requires a widget which is based on flash/javascript. BOX.net does allow hotlinking of files, but it is limited to premium customers only.
The Winner!
Therefore the selected file host service from the list above is MyDataNest.com (and also SigMirror.com).
I would recommend you to register and use both these websites.
MyDataNest.com offers better file management system, with the option to create many folders and sub-folders to organize your files, with download statistics against each shared file.
As most of the files which are needed to be hotlinked are usually JavaScript/CSS files, so diskspace of anything more than 1GB will suffice, but bandwidth requirements may change anytime for any blog/website with increasing popularity and MyDataNest provides maximum bandwidth (20GB/month) among the above listed websites.
So give your first preference to MyDataNest and keep a back up of all your files at SigMirror.
Finally store all the direct links used in your blog/website in a text file on your PC.
Although you may try and use their free service for as long as you want, but if you think you need more space and bandwidth then have a look on their premium plans too. All the readers of BloggerStop will straight away get a discount of 50% on any of the listed premium plans (for the first year), by using the coupon code – BLOGGERSTOP
So from now onwards, wherever you require DIRECT LINKS in my tutorials, upload your files to MyDataNest
If this article helped you in making your blog better then kindly add BloggerStop.Net to Delicious and StumbleUpon (135):
12 comments:
Nice Reviews Divya....But there are many sites more like ripway and getdropbox just i keep on updaing list can check all here ..Free Javascript hosting sites And let me too know there if you found some more.
You can update your list ....here
@Anshul & Googy
Thanks for suggesting these sites, although I heard of getdropbox but I never tried it. As mentioned by you Anshul, the bandwidth is not clearly mentioned and moreover in their service we need to download and install their application that's quite boring to explain in every tutorial, isn't it?
The site yourjavascripts.com sounds really great. But the site is quite new to mention and suggest it to others, and also without a proper account in the website, the file management may not be so easy. Moreover according to the who.is info the site has been registered only for a year (till Aug.2010) so I am not too confident in it.
Yes Divya I know that it (yourjavascript.com) is only registered for a year, but we should apply give and take policy there, which won't cost us anything, well we bloggers can just click on the ads there and support it to carry on and hope for its service for a long period.
Helping others is fine...
but imagine a situation, where you recommended a website to 100s of readers and after an year that website closed down....now who is going to take the responsibility of those 1000s of missing files?
In reviews like these we suggest the readers to take proper back ups at other similar websites but no corporate website will ever suggest this to their members, they'll simply start a service and keep it running till they are making good profits...
@Googy
Here's an example, of what I was explaining:
A post at DigitalPoint, advertising their hosting site (on Sep26, 2008):
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1014380
On Dec5, 2008 he declared the SALE of his site:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=9988558#post9988558
[Do read the text under the subheading "Resources" in that post]
That site is no longer working...
Yeah! I got your point here...so I just tried another way & it worked. I just logged on to google sites and created a page using 'file cabinet' template and uploaded a javascript file and copied the download link, it was something like this- http://sites.google.com/site/asishnarayanproject/jsfiles/scrolltopcontrol.js?attredirects=0&d=1 and just deleted '?attredirects=0&d=1' part from the link and added to my blog as <script src='http://sites.google.com/site/asishnarayanproject/jsfiles/scrolltopcontrol.js' type='text/javascript'/> and it worked! You can check the scroll to top button in working in my site: http://blogzgallery[dot]blogspot[dot]com, you can also check the source part there.
Yeah I know that method, but you can see that it is not so user friendly. Moreover as I have already explained in the post, Google has not disclosed the allowed bandwidth. Believe me...Limited bandwidth without any stats is really annoying!
Very nice information :)) , but now I decide to places my javascript files in my blogger template coz I think there is no one PERFECT free file hosting :p ...
Thx :)
Just an FYI, DataNest no longer allows hotlinking with their free plan. You'll need to get the $7.95 plan to get direct access to your files.
Hi Chris,
What's the source of your info.?
I'm following MDN at Twitter and checked their news feed too, no such announcement has been made by them!
i've register at mydatanest!!thx for the info. :D
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