File Hosting & Sharing
File hosting is the plumbing behind every link you have ever been sent. This category covers the whole path a file takes: the upload itself, where the bytes are stored, the URL that points at them, and the headers that decide whether a PDF opens in the browser or lands in the downloads folder. It also covers the limits every host imposes — per file, per request, per month of traffic, per account — and the controls layered on top, from password protection and expiring links to version history and rollback. If you have ever wondered why a link downloads instead of displaying, or why a file that worked yesterday now says the quota is full, the answer is in here.
34 terms in this category
Bandwidth Limit
A bandwidth limit is the total volume of data a host will send out on your behalf in a billing period, usually a month. It counts what leaves, not what is stored, so a tiny file can exhaust it and a huge one may never touch it.
Checksum
A checksum is a short fixed-length value calculated from a file's bytes, used to confirm that the copy you received is identical to the copy that was sent. Same bytes in, same value out — and one changed bit produces a completely different value.
Chunked Upload
Chunked upload is the technique of splitting one large file into smaller pieces and sending each piece as its own request. If the connection drops, only the piece in flight is lost rather than the whole transfer.
Content-Disposition
Content-Disposition is an HTTP response header that tells the browser whether to show a file in the window or save it to disk, and what name to suggest when it saves. It is how one URL can either open a PDF in a tab or start a download.
Direct Link
A direct link points at a file's bytes rather than at a page about the file. Request it and you get the file itself, with its own Content-Type header and nothing wrapped around it.
Document Hosting
Publishing office documents — .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, .csv, .rtf — at web addresses. No browser can draw these formats, so a correct response ends in a clean download with the right file name.
Download Link
A download link is an address that makes the browser save a file to disk instead of displaying it in a tab. The behaviour comes from a header on the response or an attribute on the anchor tag, not from anything inside the file.
Drag-and-Drop Upload
Drag-and-drop upload lets someone drag a file from their desktop or file manager straight onto a web page to begin uploading it. There is no button to press and no file picker dialog to navigate.
Expiring Link
A shareable address that stops serving its file after a set moment — a date, a number of days, or a number of downloads. The file stays stored; only the route to it closes.
File Extension
A file extension is the short suffix after the last dot in a file name — .pdf, .png, .html, .woff2 — used as a hint about what the file contains. It is part of the name, never part of the data.
File Hosting
File hosting is the service of keeping a file on a machine that is always online and giving it a web address, so anyone with that address can view or download it. The host owns the disk, the bandwidth and the certificate; you supply the file.
File Sharing
File sharing is getting one particular file to one particular person or group, and controlling who else can reach it. Hosting makes a file available; sharing decides who the who is.
File Size Limit
A file size limit is the largest a single file may be for a host to accept and store it. It is measured one file at a time, so it says nothing about how many files you may keep or how much traffic they will generate.
File Versioning
File versioning keeps the previous copy of a file when a new one is uploaded under the same name, instead of overwriting it. Every publish adds to a history you can read back from, rather than replacing what was there.
Folder Upload
Sending a whole directory to a host in one go, with its internal structure intact, rather than picking files one at a time. Every file arrives at the same place in the tree it started in.
Free File Hosting
Free file hosting is a plan that costs nothing to upload and serve files, paid for in limits rather than money. The useful question is never whether it is free, but which of storage, traffic, file size, retention and branding has been capped to make it so.
Hotlinking
Hotlinking is when another site embeds a file using its address on your host, so every visitor to their page downloads it from you. They get the image; you get the traffic bill.
Image Hosting
Storing image files somewhere on the web and serving them at addresses that can be dropped straight into an img tag, an email or a marketplace listing. The useful output is the address, not the upload.
Instant Rollback
Instant rollback is returning a published file or site to an earlier version in a single action, with the change live straight away. Nothing is rebuilt and nothing is re-uploaded, because the earlier copy is already stored.
Lead Capture Form
A short form shown in front of a hosted file or site: the visitor gives a name and an email, the content opens, and the answer lands in the owner's dashboard.
MIME Type
A MIME type, also called a media type or content type, is the short label a server sends to say what kind of data a response contains — text/html, image/png, application/pdf. The browser decides what to do with the bytes based on that label, not on the file name.
Multipart Upload
Multipart upload is the object-storage protocol, originally from Amazon S3 and now copied widely, for sending one large object as numbered parts that share an upload ID. A final completion call lists every part number with its ETag and turns the parts into a single object.
Object Storage
Object storage keeps each file as a self-contained object — its bytes, its metadata and a key that names it — inside a flat container reached over HTTP. There is no directory tree and no file handle to open, seek and write.
Password-Protected Link
A hosted address that asks for a shared secret before it will show the file or site behind it. One password covers everyone who has the link; there are no individual accounts.
PDF Hosting
Publishing a .pdf at a web address so it opens in the reader's browser rather than landing in their downloads folder. The header the host sends decides which of those happens.
Presigned URL
A presigned URL is a link to a private stored object that carries its own authorisation in the query string. Anyone holding the link can perform the one operation it was signed for, on the one object it names, until it expires.
Public URL
An address that serves its content to anyone who requests it, with no sign-in, token or password. Having the address is the only requirement.
Shareable Link
A shareable link is the address you hand to another person so they can reach a file you have hosted. It normally points at a page that presents the file — name, size, a download button — rather than at the raw bytes.
Static File Hosting
Static file hosting serves files exactly as they were uploaded, byte for byte, with no code running on the server to assemble the response. Every visitor to a given address gets the identical bytes back.
Storage Bucket
A storage bucket is the top-level container in an object storage system: a named, region-bound namespace that holds objects and carries the settings applied to all of them.
Storage Quota
A storage quota is the total volume of data your account may hold at any one moment. It is a standing measurement of what sits on disk, and downloading a file does not change it.
Upload Limit
An upload limit is the ceiling on a single upload operation — how much you may send in one request, and sometimes how many files or how often. It constrains the act of sending, not the size of any one stored file and not the total you are allowed to keep.
URL Slug
The readable, hand-picked part of a web address that names one particular thing — the 'acme-pitch' in acme-pitch.99helpers.site. It is chosen, short and made only of lowercase letters, digits and hyphens.
ZIP Archive
A single .zip file that holds many files and folders, each compressed separately. On a host it is used two ways: served as one download, or unpacked on upload so its contents are served individually.