CAPTCHA’s are a double-edged sword for most users. I personally hate them a lot, but I concede that they are required to help prevent something I hate even more, SPAM. SPAM comes in many forms:

• Emails
• Comments
• IM Chatter
• Others

While these are activities most of us use on a daily basis you might notice that none of the above functions involve XtraUpload at all. ‘What could SPAM have to do with XtraUpload?’ you might ask. While SPAM is most prevalent in the above part of our daily lives, there exists a SPAM that aims to kill puppies and steal from the poor. That form of Spam is Server Spam, excess traffic, useless requests, and the like. “But Matt, that’s not spam! Your a lying sack of crap!!!”. Wait, please allow me to explain myself.

Spam is annoying, right? Spam is unnecessary, right? Spam is excessive, right? Ever heard the adage, “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, its a duck.”? I’m sure you have. Well is Server Spam all of the above? I think it is. Server Spam is like a DOS attack, but much less effective in taking down a server. Its just there to slow everything down and make the user experience less enjoyable, while not breaking any laws.

In XtraUpload this comes in the form of automated, mass downloads clogging up the pipes connecting a server to the internet. This greatly reduces the responsiveness of a server and the overall experience for everyone that actually wants to use the service. Granted a DOS attack is more effective, but in many places it is also illegal. Server Spam is just in the realm of legality, because it doesn’t shut down the service, just slows it down.

The question you have in your head now is most likely “WTF? Are you serious?”. Ok that was 2 questions.

The reason for this description is to explain why XtraUpload needs a download Captcha. Download CAPTCHAs are the little images you need to replicate in letter form before you can download a file in XtraUpload. In XtraUpload v1.6 these captchas are huge, cumbersome, and sometimes very hard to read. Not only that but there is no way to generate a new captcha if the one you have is useless.

In XtraUpload v2 the Captchas are small, colorful, and very easy to read. And if for any reason you cant read the one you got generated, you can just hit the refresh button to get a new one. Very simple, very effective.

As many would agree, its the details that matter most.
-Matt

XtraUpload v2 has just received its new file storage engine. For the previous portion of development I implemented the old storage system used in 1.6. This engine is effective but does not properly handle files previously uploaded. v1.6 discards the upload and just tells the user that the file was previously uploaded, providing them with the other files links.

This is a problem for 3 reasons: password protection defaults to the old file settings and so does the the file description. This also makes it very hard to track file popularity(how many people have the same file and are trying to share it). XtraUpload v2 implements a completely rewritten file storage engine, using file references. these are database entries for each upload attempt that is successful.

Once the upload is complete, XtraUpload stores the file info(md5 hash, size, location on server, etc.) in one table and the user info(file name, size, password, description, downloads etc.) in a different table. This allows anyone to upload their files and be assured of custom links with stats independent of other people’s links.

This is just one of the revolutionary changes already implemented in Xtrapload v2. Watch this space for more details as they become available.

XtraFile has long committed its file hosting project to the community since early 2006 and is still running strong.

The only reason why XtraFile can remain running is because of the generous donations many of our contributors have given.

However, in order to continue for many years down the road, we are still in need of donations to cover the fees involved in running this site as well as developing our products.

Has XtraFile helped you in any way?

Please support our cause and if you would like to donate, there is a Donate button at the top of every page in which you can click to donate to XtraFile.

Thank you very much!

I have setup a demo of XtraUpload 1.6 for people to see how it works. Please leave a comment below if anything doesn’t look right or is not working correctly. Current Filesize limit is 50MB and files will be deleted after 7 days.
-Matt

Well, well, well. After more then 5 months since the last release I am very proud to announce that XtraUpload v1.6 has moved into Release Candidate(RC) Status! This release is Very Highly recommended for anyone running XtraUpload. There has been a massive number of changes from 1.5 to 1.6, from full unicode encoding to 4x speed improvements in some places. Because this is the first RC release i am including 2 changelogs, one from the v1.6 beta series and one from v1.5.6. They are included below:

v1.5.6 -> 1.6.0 RC1

Improvements, Additions

Admin Panel Redesign
Kernel Recoded(again)
Kernel Extensions
New Template System
CSS/Div/xHTML Templates
Download Code Vastly Improved
File Manager Improved
Upload Error Reporting Improved
Improved Site Menu System
New/Updated File Icons Added
4x Speed Improvements in some places
Restructured Initilization of XU Core
Other Small Improvements

Bug Fixes

Fixed Timed File delete, EG: after X days of no downloads
Fixed Issue with MoneyBrokers payment processor
Fixed Issue with StormPay Payment Processor
Fixed Account Bandwith Limits
Fixed Folder Delete
Fixed 200+ PHP Notices
Fixed Log Reading errors on large sites, admin page kills server
Fixed Download Limit for Groups
Fixed Invalid REGEXP to check for valid emails
Fixed Language Bit not showing for Contact Us page
Fixed Remote URL Upload Error: Class 'http_class' not found
Fixed File Password does not show on upload success
Fixed Invalid PHP Upload Not showing Error
+ Many others

1.6 B4 -> 1.6 RC1

Improvements, Additions

Updated jQuery to 1.2.6
Added Duplicate File Upload Option
Integrated JS-AIO-Packer javascript packer into code
Fixed Log Reading errors on large sites, admin page kills server
Resolved 30+ PHP Notices
Fixed Ads Manager for groups with 'no_ads'
Fixed Flash Upload JavaScript Errors
New/Updated File Icons Added
More Speed Improvements
Better Download Manager
Preliminary URL Upload Progress Bar FIX
New Language Bit: $lang['file_upload']['5']
Switched to Unicode encoding
Optimized final download routine
Removed 3 mysql queries


Bug Fixes

Download Limit for Groups does not work
Invalid REGEXP to check for valid emails
Language Bit not showing for Contact Us page
Remote URL Upload Error: Class 'http_class' not found
File Password does not show on upload success
Invalid PHP Upload Not showing Error

Now that we are in RC I am recommending this release over the previous 1.5.6. A demo will be setup shortly on Xtrafile.com so you can all test it out. Keep those bug reports coming so I can make this as stable as it can be before v2.

Download

You can find the download links on its product page or Google Code.

-Matt

Recently I have been having massive issues with my main laptop, it had a decent size memory leak. The page-file would fill up every 3-4 hours requiring a cold reboot. At first I just dealt with it, having to stop what I was doing(read: coding) and reboot my computer 5x a day. Well at 4AM this morning I was composing the release notes for XtraUpload 1.6 RC1 and the page-file ran out of memory. Right when i was finished and i was about to save. I lost everything. Including my mind. So after I rebooted I shut down explorer.exe, opened up the task manager and sorted all processes by User, Process Name. 3 minutes later i was down to 40 processes, mostly created by SYSTEM. I was hesitant at first, but then I remembered my uncontrollable rage when my computer last froze, so I said screw it! Screw them all! One by one I killed the innocent looking for my target and once I found it, with it’s unstable memory allocations occurring right in front of me, I reached for my mouse(I call it Judge Dread) and let “The Judge, Jury, and Executioner” do my dirty work.

Once I rebooted again(I stopped my video drivers in search of my victim, explorer was having a fit) I scoured the Internet looking for this BCMWLTRY.EXE. Turns out it is MY DAMN WIRELESS MANAGER. AHHAHHA!!1!!1one111. So I Decreed that all computers I touch must hack the Matrix through an Ethernet connection.

And now back to writing up the release notes for XU 1.6 RC1

-Matt

I have just finished polishing up the New JavaScript Packer included in XtraUpload 1.6 and I am releasing it as a separate product. JS-AIO is a very small, very efficient JavaScript packer written in PHP. Here are some stats about its usefulness:

Without JS-AIO

• 14 files
• 232kb file size

With JS-AIO

• 1 File
• 33.2kb file size

I think it really speaks for itself, but if you want more information please visit its product page.
-Matt

I have completed the forum maintenance detailed in a earlier blog post just now.

Please read the previous post for more information of Part 2 of this Maintenance.

-Matt

As a warning to all, the forums will be taken down tonight and receive a massive cleaning. Our new direction for the forums is to provide accurate support and the way the current forums are it is exceedingly hard to accomplish that. This is a 2 part operation, the details of which are below.

Pt. 1

• Remove useless boards
• Archive old boards
• Remove guest posting

Pt. 2

• Delete inactive users
• Empty the trash forum
• Upgrade to the new IP. Board version
• Strip out all components
• Integrate the forums into our current site design

Part 2 will happen some time next week and a new blog post will go up warning everyone that it will be occuring. If you want to keep your user account on the forums please login to it within the next week, anyone that has not logged in within the past month will have their account deleted.

We are about halfway done with the overall New Xtrafile.com Experience, I hope everyone likes it once its done.

-Matt

Yay!
The new site is finally done! The switch to Wordpress has been in the works for some time now and its been a snap to setup the way we needed it. Once I saw that 2.6 had been released I knew it was time to make the switch. It took just under 18 hours to completely configure the new site, a new record for us. I hope everyone likes the new site, all pages are working correctly now and by popular demand the downloads links for XtraUpload are all over the site including to the right of EVERY page. ( -> Look over there under downloads ->)

Now that the new site is up its time to talk about XtraUpload 2.0(XU2). Details about XU2, current development status, SVN access, etc. can be found on its product page. The information on that page WILL change in the next 24 hours to reflect the changes XU2 brings to the table. For instance, sometime this week I will be opening up the language bits for translation, on site. That’s right, you can just come to xtrafile.com and begin helping translate XU2 right in your browser. Not only that but the online translation engine is built into XU2 so you have a nice interface to keep up with language changes. There are just a few more changes i have to make to XU2 before i will release the first ALPHA(read: unstable & incomplete).

Sit tight for a few more days, you long wait is about to pay off!

-Matt