A New Website Project

foid025

Hi all. Long time no post... I've been working on a new website recently and thought I'd share with you all, in the hope of getting back some feedback / comments.

The site is called Zoopla - www.zoopla.net - and it's essentially a free online file storage service. Upload your files (MS Office, text, PDF for now), and then access them from any other computer with an Internet connection. Rate / review other people's public files (poetry, jokes, etc.).

Essentially, I see four uses to the site. Mainly, as a replacement to USB pen drives. I transfer files from home to school on a daily basis, and pen drives just don't do it: I forget them, lose them, or they don't work on one or another of the school's computers. The other option is to email work to myself, but Zoopla is a lot faster than that.

The service can also be used to "be heard". You can upload files to the public folder, such as your poetry, jokes, blog entries, etc. - and let other people read them and then rate / review them.

The site can used to work on group projects and stay up to date. Say I am working on a PPT for school: I upload the latest version, then another group member will download that and work off of it and then upload it again, and so everyone can stay up to date and constantly have access to the latest version of a shared document.

Finally, it can be used to make a backup of important documents, since they can then be accessed from anywhere at anytime.

Eventually, I plan on adding user accounts, which will give two major advantages to users: First, the ability to upload several files / whole folders at once. And second, the ability to organize and make folders on their accounts, thus allowing them to store a serious amount of docs / files.

What do you think? Do you think it can work, do you think people can use it? Would you benefit from it? Etc etc etc... Any feedback / comments are appreciated. Thanks!

vaaaska

Social networking, upload storage, family colab, video sharing, picture sharing SITEs are the new black Trans-Am with Firebird on the hood. And Mr. T.

Jason_Batten

Speaking of crappy social networks (not your idea, it's cool), I joined myspace the other day to help a friend out with some styling and WOW, that's a nasty piece of turd. I can't believe it's worth $900 million.

SHAME SHAME SHAME!

cheerio

you should call the site like "noola" so that people trying to get to moola.com who accidently hit n instead of m end up on YOUR site 😉

foid025

yeah i must say... the myspace site is an ugly piece of turd. really ugly. you'd think for that much they could hire a decent designer.

as for zoopla though... anyone, feedback? lol :rolleyes: now now. haha thanks guys.

Jason_Batten

foid025 wrote:
What do you think? Do you think it can work, do you think people can use it? Would you benefit from it? Etc etc etc... Any feedback / comments are appreciated. Thanks!

The idea is alright. It can work, some people will use it. I would not benefit from it as I have gigs of space with my hosting package (servage.net rule!), I like my USB key very much as my personal computer is not connected to the internet, nor to any other computer. In my opinion it would not be worth it. There are already a lot of solutions to the space problem. Solving the space problem for others but it comes at a cost to you, it's called the bandwidth problem 😉

Random comments: There is no business value in it. Do man kind a favour, make their choice easier by offering them less options, email gives yah enough space now 🙂

It's a good idea, just too late in my opinion. The rating, reviewing part does have some spark to it still... explore it.

Don't offer a solution to create yourself a problem. Just because it's online and it's a service does not mean it has to be free. People will pay for quality. A lot of people seem to enjoy using Basecamp (a service which is free-to-expensive) but when you use at the app you realise even a 6-month PHP noob could crack out that code.

Good luck and keep thinking you might be on to something 😃

foid025

I would not benefit from it as I have gigs of space with my hosting package (servage.net rule!)

Haha yeah servage does rule. That's what I'm using too... so much space. You happy with them then I take it? Yeah the thing with Zoopla is its not meant for tech savvy people such as yourself or me... Yeah we have expensive hosting plans and we can easily FTP all sorts of files to our heart's contempt. It's meant more for everyday - normal people with only a strong basic knowledge of how to use a computer.

Mainly I see it as for students - high school & middle school - and also some adults, around the home and for work. But mainly students in secondary school.

Jason_Batten

foid025 wrote:
Haha yeah servage does rule. That's what I'm using too... so much space. You happy with them then I take it? Yeah the thing with Zoopla is its not meant for tech savvy people such as yourself or me... Yeah we have expensive hosting plans and we can easily FTP all sorts of files to our heart's contempt. It's meant more for everyday - normal people with only a strong basic knowledge of how to use a computer.

Mainly I see it as for students - high school & middle school - and also some adults, around the home and for work. But mainly students in secondary school.

Yes, Servage are very good. Although I'm still hounding them for a better statistics system. They say they're working on it.

Your idea has in my opinion a mixed or slighty misplaced focus. The idea is to offer storage remotely so that people don't have to carry around CDs, DVDs or USB keys, right? As well as have their work noticed and rated. Teams can use the service to share work files and finally, as a remote back-up storage device. The focus you say is on the transfering of data more than anything, so instead of a USB key, use the remote server.
At this stage let me just say if we aren't the targetted audience you really shouldn't be asking us :quiet: If I remember correctly back when I was in highschool there was space set up for us and we could access the servers remotely (from home). Our school was a public school so it's not like it was out of reach technology. Not all schools can offer the service which is where you can come in but finding the market is your job and seeing if the need is large enough (you could even approach schools getting them to pay for the service). Now, for us as web developers I think the "being heard" part would be well worth exploring. Rating is something that online, doesn't work well and it desperately needs a new angle 😉

There are some business opportunities in your ideas. Build on them. Don't do anything for free though. I definitely think that you are merging two ideas which could very well be two seperate and more focused projects.

Think about it... Good luck! 😃

vaaaska

Jason Batten wrote:
A lot of people seem to enjoy using Basecamp (a service which is free-to-expensive) but when you use at the app you realise even a 6-month PHP noob could crack out that code.

Jason, have you seen the code yourself? You do know it's in Ruby right?

I think it's fair to point out that a 6 month noob could possibly do it, but it would most likely not be nearly as efficient as theirs (or safe). At 6 months of PHP I was still struggling with some very low level stuff even though I had already built an intranet site (yeah, it's been rebuilt by me since then thank goodness).

Jason_Batten

vaaaska wrote:
Jason, have you seen the code yourself? You do know it's in Ruby right?

I think it's fair to point out that a 6 month noob could possibly do it, but it would most likely not be nearly as efficient as theirs (or safe). At 6 months of PHP I was still struggling with some very low level stuff even though I had already built an intranet site (yeah, it's been rebuilt by me since then thank goodness).

I have not seen the code myself, I did not know it was Ruby. Basecamp is a good application, never said it wasn't. My point was you don't need to build a perfect great big application to make money. Basecamp doesn't have many features but it's success is what it does with the ones it has 🙂 Enough about Basecamp, more about Zoopla 😃

foid025

haha thanks guys.

I definitely think that you are merging two ideas which could very well be two seperate and more focused projects.

Yeah I realize it's got very different targets / service offerings. But as of now, I'm not sure what can work and for who, so that's why I feel its better to publicize all possibilities and let people figure out what works for them. The way I see it, the service is very very simple in its basic form, but it seems very flexible and adaptable to different situations.

Don't do anything for free though.

Why do you say that? Haha though I would love to make money on it, and plan on putting ads when enough users are using Zoopla to justify the work of implementing an ad solution. But being a student and having my parents pay for everything I need (including my Servage space), I don't reallllllly need to make money just yet.

Thanks for the feedback though. Workin on user accounts now...

Jason_Batten

me wrote:
Don't do anything for free though.

foid025 wrote:
Why do you say that? Haha though I would love to make money on it, and plan on putting ads when enough users are using Zoopla to justify the work of implementing an ad solution. But being a student and having my parents pay for everything I need (including my Servage space), I don't reallllllly need to make money just yet.

Just because you don't need to make money, you can. People will pay for quality services, it's just a matter of finding the right people 🙂 Don't just count on ads... there are much better makes to make money from a website. Google ads is just popular at the moment, but there is greater profit to be made. Google ads require I high traffic web site to make a lot of money. You could make more money by charging for a service (sign up fee or something) for less people, like I said you just have to target the right people.

foid025

Just because you don't need to make money, you can. People will pay for quality services, it's just a matter of finding the right people Don't just count on ads... there are much better makes to make money from a website. Google ads is just popular at the moment, but there is greater profit to be made. Google ads require I high traffic web site to make a lot of money. You could make more money by charging for a service (sign up fee or something) for less people, like I said you just have to target the right people.

Yeah I have some experience with that already... 300 unique visitors a day will fish you around $30 a month, if you keep the ads to a minimum (so they're not too too obnoxious). I was thinking about charging for the membership part of the Zoopla service - just a small fee like $10 or $15 a year. I don't want to implement that for a while though, for one because I want to fine tune the service and make sure it works well and is worth paying for. And two because I don't know what the legal issues are for making money (as in more than a couple hundred bucks) so I need to read up on that first... And on making an online payment system. I think Paypal can do it really easily, but still there is work to be done.

madwormer2

It's still not secure. You really need to fix that, at the moment both files AND passwords are vunerable, as opposed to just files if the current password system is disabled.

foid025

can you give me some pointers as to where I should look into? I know one problem which is that if anyone tries to access a file directly, there will be nothing stopping them. How do I fix this though? And for the rest... no clue.

😕

Thanks though 🙂

madwormer2

I suggest the following:

In order to access ALL of the files, the user must go through a script, as opposed to downloading the file directly from the folder. To do this can be simple, as simple as checking if the id passed is "free" (as in not passworded) and then doing a readfile() on the file (which is held in an inaccessible directory)

And to password it, all you do is add an extra layer on that which also checks the user's entered password, and if it does not match the one stored in the database (which, might I add, would be more secure for members if it was merely the hash of the password stored in the database) then it displays an error, as opposed to supplying the file.

There are a few ready made download scripts on hotscripts.com if you want to look at some of the current solutions.

Mike_Good

Nice site and Idea. I like the design. But, like they said it is pretty vunerable. You really need to fix that.

Merve

The obvious security issues aside, your site has a really nice, clean, simple design. I like the interface very much. Keep up the good work.

foid025

Thanks all... Madwormer I've got two ways of opening files right now. One involves opening it directly, so yeah I suppose I could take that off and secure the folder with the user files in it. The other way involves running this little script:

if($accessCorrect)
	{
	    $contentType = filetype($fid . $ext); 
		header("Content-Type: $contentType\n"); 
		header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=".basename($name . $ext)); 
		readfile($fid . $ext);
	}

I check access and then open the file. Is this secure in your opinion? Problem is, when I took out write and read privileges for "all" and "group", I can't open the file even through this code. How do I get around this, or what security level do I give the folder? Thanks for your help everyone.