During a web design and build project, and especially at the start, you’ll probably want to share a number of files with us: photos, logo & brand artwork, text documents, data exports, PDFs and more. But how best to share them?
Email & Basecamp
If it’s the odd one or two files, and not too large, then email them across. Or better still, attach them to the relevant message in Basecamp, the project collaboration tool we’ll have given you access to. That way everyone involved in the project can find the files easily in future, even if they join at a later stage.
However, email isn’t good for very large files, and Basecamp is clumsy if you have lots of them.
Dropbox
…which is why we also create a shared folder on Dropbox.com for every project and share it with you. If you happen to have a Dropbox account, you’ll know how to use it; if you don’t, you should find it easy to set up and upload things to. Each person has their own Dropbox storage capacity; the free (Basic) account will give you 2Gb of space, or if you use it regularly a paid account gets you 1Tb of space for £7.99 a month. If we share a folder with 500Mb of photos in it, it counts towards both of our accounts.
Bulk upload is very easy and it’s a good way of sharing archives of documents and photos that will be of use during the project and beyond; you can integrate the Dropbox folders into your normal Windows Explorer / Mac Finder interface and drag and drop files between them as if they were local folders.
Google Drive
Almost everyone has a Google account of some kind these days; if you don’t, you can sign up for one here (and use your normal email address instead of a Gmail one). That will give you 15Gb of free space; you can then share an individual folder up to 10Gb in size with someone else. (And, if necessary, then delete it once we’ve downloaded and do so again with more files.)
One-off file transfers
If you don’t want a Dropbox account, and just want to send us a one-off large file (or zip of multiple files), you can use a tool like WeTransfer, HighTail or SendBigFiles.
WeTransfer lets you send up to 2GB at a time for free, or 20Gb at a time with their Plus plan (12 EUR per month). With HighTail you can share 250Mb for free, and get some other features suitable for creative work; with SendBigFiles you can send 50Mb without registration, or 250Mb with free registration.
USB stick or CD-ROM
Actually – please don’t send us a CD-ROM; most of us don’t even have the right drive any more. A USB stick is fine although it may take a few days to reach the right person; please send it to our head office: Square Eye Ltd, 5 St John’s Lane, London EC1M 4BH, marked for the attention of the appropriate person.
FTP/SFTP file transfer
If you’re comfortable using FTP to upload files, we can arrange somewhere to host them. Let us know how much space is needed and we’ll work out the best place for it. If you need an FTP client (program), good ones include CuteFTP (Windows or Mac), WS_FTP (Windows), or Transmit (Mac). We’ll need to give you the server details and a login.
If you would like to discuss your next web design project, just book a call with us.