I have quite a few brides who live out of town, and I would like to be able to send the images files from thier weddings online instead of burning DVD's and mailing. I would also like to set it up to be able to just FTP entire shoots to other clients.

I know I can set up file in my root directory that has the images in it, but will that make it easy for the clients to go in and get them? Is there a place that hosts full res images online that can be ftp'd to the client so that the client doesn't have to download an FTP program?

Did I ask this question right? My web knowledge is limited especially when it comes to FTP and stuff like this.

Why is there a benefit to them to receive them this way versus a disc? It's pretty easy for you to get some server space and do this, but then you will become tech support for frustrated brides trying to figure out how to connect to your server.

It seems much easier just to mail them a disc.

One easy option is to use a service like yousendit. You aren't hosting the file and it automatically expires in 7 (?) days. The client just has one download (you send them an email with the link using yousendit), no mess, no fuss.

The other option would be to do it on your own site. For safety's sake, I'd create a folder which will have only the client files in it, so you don't accidentally delete something important. Call it something like extras, resources, anything creative you like. Make sure you put a blank index file in there (just save a file called index.html in there, no data in it, nothing) so that no one can see the contents of the directory.

In either case, I would zip all the files together (in Windows select the folder of images, right click and Send to Compressed Folder) and then upload that one file. They will have all the pictures, but just one link. For the first option, yousendit will make the link. Second option, you would send a link something like www.mysite.com/extras/yourfile.zip.

Depending on how many images you're providing, this file could be quite large and take a while to download. If you host them on your own site, you will want to delete them every once in a while.

hth

I know to you it may seem easier to just send them a disc, but to me it seems easier just to set them images to ftp to the client. A couple of my brides have actually moved out of the country and this is much faster than waiting on the mail to deliver them and cheaper as well. That combined with the fact that this is not my only full time job, I am a marketing director for a non-profit organization, and I have 2 kids to chase around, It would love to save that hour a day I spend burning disks and getting them ready for shipping and driving to the post office. That one hour can be spent reading to my kids or doing homework with them. I can just set everything to FTP and let it run overnight and then send the client the link to download the images. It isn't going to be for everyone, but for my out of the country brides it is a good solution.

I never thought about yousendit.com that is a great solution. Thanks so much for your help!