DivShare Groups: The web’s most powerful way to share
The world of DivShare just got a whole lot bigger. This morning we’re proud to introduce DivShare Groups, a simple and social way to share your files with people around the web. You can use groups in a million different ways — collaborating with co-workers on a big project, sharing family photos or showing off your documents, files and images to thousands of DivShare users with a common hobby or interest.
Before we go too deep into all the new features, let’s learn by example. Here are a few DivShare groups that we and our friends have created to get the party started:
Keith Ward Music — This group is a place for Keith, a fast-rising singer-songwriter in New York City, to post the latest photos from his shows as well as MP3s of his music — including a ton of live tracks from his latest gig.
Around the World — Dave and I are avid world travelers, hampered only by the fact that we spend most of our days staring at computer screens making DivShare rock. We created this group to share photos and travel tips with our fellow explorers — so post away! We’ve started you off with some photos from our recent trips to Europe and one of my other favorite destinations, Las Vegas.
Animals in Costumes — My friend Rubina has a very strange fetish, it seems. She filled this group with all her photos of pets in silly outfits. If you enjoy this, I’m sure she’d love to add to her collection of cute (and somewhat creepy) photos.
Alright, time to get busy. The first step to falling in love with DivShare groups is to find a few to join.
Joining a Group
All of DivShare’s public groups can be found on our brand new Groups page, which you can find in the newly reorganized tabs at the top of the page. From here, you can browse the most recent and most popular groups, or search by keyword for one that fits your interests. We have a feeling a ton of new groups will pop up over the next few days, so find one you like, become a member and start sharing!
Creating a Group
Creating a group couldn’t be easier — all you need is a DivShare account and a cool idea. Click on the “create” link on your browse page, or click the Dashboard tab and choose “My Groups” from the sub-menu on that page. Then just fill out the simple group creation form with a title, description and a custom URL — all groups get a special address, such as “mygroup.divshare.com”. You can also add a photo and set your privacy — here’s a run-down of the different options:
• Who can see your group: All DivShare users, or members only. If you choose “members only”, your group won’t appear on the public browse page.
• Who can join your group: All users, or only members you approve. The second option allows you to screen people before they join.
• Who can add files: All users, members only or moderators only. You can allow people to upload anonymously, force them to join the group first, or make it so that only the people in charge can post.
You can upgrade any of your current members to moderators, which allows them to upload files and manage members.
OK, you’ve got a new group! Let’s add some files:
There are two ways to add files to a group — upload a new file, or add an existing file to the group from your dashboard. After you create a group or join one that allows you to add files, the group will show up on a new section of the upload form, like so:
Just pick the proper group from that list, and upload as you always do. The files will automatically appear on your group page! If you’ve got files on your dashboard that you want to add to a new group, use the “Modify files…” drop-down menu in the same way you would if you were moving the file to a folder. You’ll find a new section in the drop-down list called “Group Actions,” which allows you to move your file to any of the groups you’ve joined. Here’s how that looks:
The Big Picture:
DivShare groups come with some other cool features, like comments and an easy invitation system — but we’ve deliberately kept Groups in line with the spirit of DivShare: freedom and simplicity. We’re building this site for you, and we’re really thrilled to see all the cool groups that you come up with. And, as you may have noticed, DivShare development is never really done. We’ve already got a few new features we’re going to add to groups in the coming days — here’s a quick list, and feel free to post more ideas in the comments.
- Subscribe to a group via e-mail or RSS
- Add featured files that always show up first when a user visits the group
- Add links and more networking features, just like the ones on your DivShare profile
And, of course, there are a ton of other DivShare upgrades on the way. In the next few weeks, you can expect an embeddable Flash photo gallery, a redesigned download page and a premium plan that provides some really powerful uploading tools and an astronomical max file size. And before we go, we’ve got one more group to show off:
The DivShare Button Contest — Dave’s been designing ton of DivShare buttons and banners, but before we add them to the site, we need your help! Head over to this group, grab a copy of the DivShare logo and create a promotional button that explains why you’re such a DivShare fan. The creators of our three favorite buttons will get a free premium account for a year when we launch the service later this month.
And, like any contest, the winners are chosen solely at our discretion, void where prohibited, and good luck!
We hope you enjoy the new, social, group-ified DivShare! Drop all your suggestions, ideas and error reports in the comments, and thanks for being a part of the site. Happy group-surfing!
April 10th, 2007 at 7:29 am
Cool ^^ But still no “Folder Link” to folders…
April 10th, 2007 at 8:05 am
Agree with the Folder Link, and also there’s no way to advance pages of groups list?
I read “Page 1 of 3″ at top but didn’t found Prev - Next buttons.
April 10th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Oh, and also subfolders should be nice.. And a DivShare Uploader (like Flickr, simple).
April 10th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Divshare Group 드디어 시작!
오래전부터 예고되어왔던 Divshare의 Group이 시작되었습니다.
우리가 일반적으로 생각하는 다음까페같은 걸로 생각하시면 될 듯 합니다.
일반적인 그룹의 형태와는 달리 파일공유에 좀더 촛점…
April 10th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Sweet! Another awesome new feature. Very cool. If I was only interesting enough to have friends.
April 10th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
[…] DivShare has now turned social with their new “DivShare Groups.” They describe it as a “simple and social way to share your files with people around the web.” […]
April 10th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Sad to hear about premium services… You will just add premium features, not make some of the current available ‘premium’, right?
April 10th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Hey guys,
In the past few hours, more than 70 new groups have been created — great work so far! Here are the answers to a few questions in the comments so far:
• Every download page is a folder link — each file that is contained in a folder or gallery features a link to all the other files in that folder on its download page.
• We’ve fixed some of the pagination issues on the Browse page that were happening this morning, so you can now surf through all the groups online.
• Our premium services will never take away free features, but they will add powerful new tools for our users who want to upload tons of large files. Stay tuned!
April 10th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Group is very wonderful~
But It’s little Strange…
I want to see all files of Group in My Dashboard like my files.
April 10th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Thanks, I love your way of designing web sites. Clean und simple.
PS: Are you going to add OpenID-Login?
April 10th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Nice update Divshare, well done!
Some improvements:
- Better group description - add bold or italic letters, paragraphs etc,
- Ability to lock files & folders and make them viewable only to group members.
I’m a little concerned about that premium plan but I hope that you’ll continue to support & update your free services and keep their quality in high standards.
Keep it up!
April 11th, 2007 at 7:20 am
[…] لينك منبع - يك نوشته ديگر Technorati tags: آپلود, divshare […]
April 11th, 2007 at 10:51 am
hi divshare team,
what’s your email other than support-at- ?
check ur mail - i’ve sent some neat ideas there ….
April 11th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Yes, please add a new rule: Who can see group files? (All / Group members)
April 11th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
[…] Nach Belieben können die User zu jedem beliebigen Thema eine Gruppe erstellen, andere Leute einladen und Dateien hochladen. Eine Art Forum/Chat ist auch eingebaut, damit die Mitglieder der jeweiligen Gruppe auch miteinander kommunizieren können. Genauer ist all das im DivShare Blog erläutert, ich spar mir das an dieser Stelle, schließlich kann es jeder kostenlos ausprobieren. […]
April 12th, 2007 at 4:36 am
can give us each person FTP account to make upload more easy
April 12th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
From the support FAQ page:
“Can I upload more than five files, or an entire folder, at one time?
Currently, users can upload up to five individual files at a time. In the near future, we’ll be introducing alternative uploading methods (such as Java and FTP) in a premium plan to allow users to upload both larger file sizes and entire folders.”
Anywho, I have a concern about the image display page. Is there any plans on changing the way images are displayed in the gallery page? Cause it’s very annoying having the image resize down to 750×421-res and in order to see the larger image, you must download it.
Wouldn’t it be more efficient to just load the full image, then set it to automatically resize to fit the window and if the user want to see it in original resolution, a simple click will restore it? Instead of using more bandwidth to load a preview image and then to also download the original image.
You guys had it like that a few previous updates ago or was this a glitch? Either way, it’s a good glitch! Example: href=”http://www.divshare.com/download/113104-d6a
April 12th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Hey Raniie,
You’re right, we used to do it that way but switched to a fixed “display image” size. The reason for this was that, although the big images look good for those of us with big monitors and fast connections, we found that a lot of users who were upping their digital camera photos (1 meg+) were subjected to a long wait and a partially-loaded, gigantic image. The Javascript resize didn’t kick in until after that whole image loaded, which could be 10 - 30 seconds, and during that time it seemed like the page was messed up. We’re not really planning on going back to the old way any time soon, but now that you mention it, we’ll work on building some better “view the large image without downloading” options into the new download page. Rock on,
Rob
April 12th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Great to hear that, Rob!
I believe an obvious, practical, and quick solution to that option would be an implementation of the “Direct Link” onto the preview image (Of course, you’ll probably fancy it up your own way. ^_~). Then, you can still have the fixed resized image being displayed (for the faster previewing), but upon clicking on the image, it will load the original full size image for display.
Tho, I gotta say, it’s really nice that you guys kept the quality still preserved in it’s resized preview form. In most other image hosting sites I’ve seen and used before, the resizing optimizations used for preview images is really crappy. It’s good to see you guys care about the quality of the image shown for your DivShare users.
Keep up the great service and quality of DivShare, you guys rock!
April 18th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
[…] DivShare Groups - file hosts are moving fast, Box has sharing of files, networks (handy if you are always sharing with the same people), a public box and widget. Features like the public box and now DivShare groups are taking filing sharing to the public, but because it’s based on a social network it’s upto the user to not share copyrighted files…you can always create a private group. […]
April 21st, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Great job divshare! I love your service and the groups is a good idea. May I suggest folders for groups? I’m fairly new to this feature so maybe I’m missing it but it would be great if the moderators can move files to folders/subfolders to organize files in the group.
Again, thanks for the service!
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:54 pm
In case you don’t want to make big changes to the Images download page I would postulate to change the “preview” image created for images size to be 800×600 rather than 750×562. I believe this will save you some of storage space.Im sure there are much more 800×600 images uploaded already than the custom resolution u show, or that it’s more probably that people will resize to 800×600 before upload if they don’t want to bother viewers to specially click the link to “real” picture. Anyway i believe you are good enough to figure out the filesize or resolution checking solution. I would also be content to see the option to disable the ability (and thus the generation) of video preview flash. For the files i uploaded the image quality was too bad or contained much errors to view anyway.
Great job witht the GUI uploader. So far i only see that it do not create preview thumbnails for videos for me(those are visible normally in explorer), as well as dont create .DDS(DXT texture) and .TGA graphics files available to explorer through custom extension libraries.
I would be very happy to see context-menu rename or rename in the lower pane for target file(between local filesystem and the divshare name).
So far thanks for great service.
Keep up the good work.
Eve aka Wizard of OZ®
April 25th, 2007 at 11:08 am
I am trying to set up a group but I do not want to make my files public. I have added a group member but when they sign in they can see my folders but if they click on them it says this file is private.
The user I have set up is a moderator….and I have set up all the other iptions correctly as far as who can see the group.
Any ideas why these are still showing up private even though the group user is signed in under there user name that is affiliated with the group.
April 29th, 2007 at 1:08 am
I just played with divshare for sometime and Im really thrilled. Please send me ur support email id so that i can constantly keep in touch with u guys.
Keep up the good work.
June 25th, 2007 at 3:28 am
I want to know who won that divshare button contest, mine has over 4000 downloads. Even if mine doesn’t win I still want to know who won the contest.
July 25th, 2007 at 2:53 am
i like to join divshare group