Dropbox / alternative for public uploads?

valve90210 · 16 Oct 2013 at 09:52

Hi All

Not sure this is the right forum but after a bit of searching there seemed to be a few dropbox threads in here and it's a busy forum so figured I'd give it a go. (Mods feel free to move to more appropriate forum)

Bit of a long winded explanation but here goes:

Where I work, I produce several publications, some of which include photos etc from the alumni. Currently they email them into us. Often they are resized via the email, or embedded in the email or embedded into word documents etc. None of which are ideal (though vastly better than some of the things I used to be sent (ie passport photos with have been paperclipped to a letter leaving paper clip marks - or even better a terrible inkjet print out on normal copier paper...which I then had to scan....)

As such we are looking into the possibility of setting up some means of people uploading photos which will allow full size versions to be easily uploaded by anyone.

Is this something that is easily achieved with Dropbox or something similar? What are the best options for doing so?

Also, is there anyway to force the uploader to include information ie their name so we know who the photo is from and what it's of?

Any help or thoughts would be very much appreciated!!!

Nexus · 16 Oct 2013 at 10:26

You could use Google Drive, which when somebody uploads to a share will show you who the item posted belongs to, so solves that. Ultimately though it would still require somebody to be registered to do that.

Your best bet to get what you want would probably be some kind of web based form where people can upload a photo, but you would have a mandatory field that they must fill out their name before it can be sent.

valve90210 · 16 Oct 2013 at 10:48

Just been reading about an idea like that, a webform which is filled in and then uploads to a dropbox folder...

Looks like I might have to talk to our IT department...never a thrilling prospect.

Energize · 16 Oct 2013 at 21:01

Just set up a web page, it's pretty trivial.

valve90210 · 17 Oct 2013 at 09:25

Nothing is trivial when it comes to dealing with our IT Department sadly, anything which means they might have to do a bit extra work tends to be a battle as they don't like change...or work...

Still, I've emailed the person who would be responsible for setting something up to see if it would be possible with the systems etc we have in place (I can't see why it wouldn't be) with a view to getting something sorted out...and will wait and see if I ever hear from him...(most likely not until I give him a call and chase...)

Energize · 17 Oct 2013 at 19:18

You could always do it independently, set up a web page somewhere that people can upload files to and add the photos from that.