Features

Even if you've no interest in creating a website, web hosting could still be a useful service. As well as facilitating the registration and administration of your own domain name, a web hosting package effectively gives you a chunk of space on a remote server that you can use for whatever you want (within the terms and conditions). Using FTP, you can upload any file to the server and leave it there as a backup or for someone else to download.

That someone else will need FTP access to your server. If your hosting package allows you to enable anonymous FTP, you'll be able to store files in a particular directory that anyone can log into. Otherwise, unless you trust your third party enough to give them your login details, you'll want to set up a second FTP login with a different name and password, with limited privileges. If your hosting package supports multiple FTP clients, you should be able to set this up in the admin facility.

If you need to store and transfer files but don't want to pay a monthly fee for a hosting package, there are various free hosting sites, and they're usually very simple to use. You may already be using a service such as Photobucket.com or Flickr.com to store digital photos. These sites have communities built around them and fulfil a social networking function, but they're also quite handy when you just want to stick a few holiday snaps online and tell your friends where to look at them.

For video, YouTube.com is king of the jungle. It limits videos to under ten minutes and 100MB, but that should be suitable for most purposes. If you want fewer restrictions, time to get your own hosting. For music, MySpace is a possible solution. If you sign up as a band, rather than an individual, which is still free, you can upload up to five MP3s (ones that you own the rights to, obviously), and find an audience for them via the site's social networking and blogging options.

Remember anything uploaded to these services is generally available to anyone who stumbles across it (though some provide privacy options) and liable to be deleted if you ignore it for too long.

For general purpose temporary storage and file transfer, there are plenty of services to choose from, typically free for up to 100MB or so on a short time limit (your files will expire after a few days), with options to pay for more. You could try www.bigupload.com, www.mailbigfile.com, www.rapidshare.com or www.yousendit.com, to name just a few.