Unexpected Network Outage

Sorry Everyone,

Around 4:45AM EST our data center went into a network outage. We're working with the techs there to restore  service to your files as soon as possible. Please hold tight and forgive us for this unexpected downtime. 

We should be returning within an hour. 

Sorry for an inconvenience this may have caused. Again, we are doing our best to work with the data center to restore service. 

100,000,000 Downloads!

Since we first started logging file information on June 23rd, 2008, we have recorded over 100,000,000 downloads to date!  Thats around 1,400,000 downloads a day on average! We would like to thank everyone for making this possible and keep getting the word out!

Quick Update: 300,000 Users!

Keep on Uploading and sharing! 

Folder Issues

After working on an issue with some members files not showing, we ended up creating a second issue with duplicate folders. For the next few hours if at all possible, please avoid uploading to any folder that you notice has a duplicate. 

We'll have both these issues cleaned up this evening. Thanks all! Keep on uploading!

New hardware on the way!

Today we just placed an order for our newest piece of equipment to ensure we can keep up with the astronomical growth that we face on a day to day basis. This will open up a lot of opportunities for us to handle many situations in the future and scale a lot easier. Just wanted to let everyone know!

In case anyone wants to know, its a new 3U storage server to continue to host everyone's files.

Still Working!

Just wanting to give everyone an update that I'm still working on features for everyone and they will be released when they are operational for everyone to see! Also, please note that I will be on vacation for 9 days starting on saturday. During that time, things will be a lot slower on production on the features I'm working on but I will still be monitoring the site. Rory will be available during this time. Thanks for your patience.

The BOXSTr Pro Benefits

In case you haven't heard, BOXSTr is more than just 1gb a day of daily bandwidth - in fact there is so much you can unlock by going PRO.

Lets take a quick look: With the free account you get 5GB of storage and 1GB of bandwidth reset daily. For many this is a good way to share small files with friends and family, but many are looking for more. 

The BOXSTr Pro account gives users anywhere from 10 to 50GB of storage for just pennies a day. You can pick the plan that fits you best and the bandwidth needed to share those files out on the net. Why not give it a try? For just $3.49 a month you can upgrade to our PRO 1 account and experience double the storage and ten times the bandwidth. Best of all, unlock the DESKTOP APPLICATION to drag and drop an unlimited amount of files to your account. 

Even better, those files never expire so long as you pay your bill - that means you can just drag and drop into the desktop app and not have to worry. BOXSTr will provide you with a secure backup for all those important documents that can also be easily shared with anyone on the net!

Want to try it? Go to BOXSTr.com/gopro.php today!

Check Recent Bandwidth Resets

Have you ever wanted to know what days your bandwidth was reset in the past? How about thinking that your bandwidth wasn't reset when you thought it was. Or are you simply someone that likes to know everything about their account. Well look no more! I have just finished a new feature that allows you to check each reset that has happened to your account in the past 30 days. This can help you see what days you seem to go through bandwidth really quick and think that your bandwidth is stuck and won't reset. Here are a couple of screenshots (Click the pictures to see a larger view):

The page above is your dashboard with the "See Your Recent Resets" link under the Bandwidth Information. When you click this you are directed to this simple page:

At this page you can see that there are 3 reset types:

Manually By Admin - This is when an admin resets your bandwidth for whatever reason (ex: ticket requesting, bandwidth problem etc.)

Automatically - This is when someone is trying to download your file and if you are out of bandwidth, it will check and see if you are elegible for a reset, if you are it will reset the bandwith and display your file with out showing the bandwidth exceeded message.

Manually By You - This is when you click the manual bandwidth reset link on your dashboard page.

As well, you can sort the types of resets you want to view from the types listed above to see more into detail of what you really want to look for (Only want to check the Automatic resets to see if it's working etc.)

Hopefully this will be another useful tool for people to see exactly when their bandwidth was reset.

Thanks For Reading!

Kyle Cannon

BOXSTr.com CTO

Bandwidth Widget is Back!

Everyone was asking "Where is the information that told me when my next bandwidth reset was going to happen?!!!!!?!" Well, after a little overhaul, it's back and better than before. Now let me explain how this works for everyone. Basically here is my dashboard (click to see full size):

Now that everyone sees my dashboard, we can see that in the red box is the widget that went missing along with the new version. Now, what's new with this version is if it has been less than a week than when you reset your bandwidth, it will show you that I reset my bandwidth (or the server did automatically 2 days ago and that I am now eligible for a reset right now if I wanted to reset it. So, lets say that I wanted to reset my bandwidth by clicking that link....

And so I did, now it says I reset it a few seconds ago and it tells me that I can now reset my bandwidth tomorrow at 11:07AM! So in a nutshell, this will give you the ability to see when your last reset was and when you are eligible for a new one! I already plan on making this better so expect a new change to how your bandwidth system works in the next few weeks!

Thanks for reading!

Kyle Cannon

BOXSTr.com CTO

Logging and Statistic System...

For the past 2 months I have been working on a very sophisticated logging and statistic system that has the ability to track just about everything on your account (even who downloaded your files) and every time I complete the system I am very displeased with it and start over. I believe this has been about the 5th time I have done this. The main problem is we get millions of downloads a day and we want to have everything be as quick and as efficient as possible. As soon as I see the big numbers in the database I start over which makes it delayed... Even more and more. I am writing this to tell you that I have been working on this for a really long time and I want it to be perfect the first time. I wont go into major detail at this time because I want this to be a surprise, but at the same time I want everyone to know that this is my number one priority at this time. 

Off to work!

Kyle Cannon

CTO of BOXSTr.com

Bandwidth clearance and related information

One of the most prominent question we get almost everyday here at BOXSTr is “How to reset my bandwidth?” and I will answer what our users need to be acquainted with about bandwidth at BOXSTr at all.

Free users are allocated 1GB of bandwidth daily (which is about 30GB per month) and for an average user who has files summing up to 100MB will find this sufficient for a daily basis. But how actually is bandwidth calculated here at BOXSTr? Now, assume that you have an MP3 file with a size of 3MB and you are streaming it on a famous community website where you get 100 hits for the testing day. Whenever the page is loaded, the streaming begins and the file is downloaded to cache. When this happens at all, BOXSTr will assume the file was completely accessed and deducts 3MB of bandwidth from your total usage. Unfair it is? No its not. Apparently, whether or not the files are loaded completely, BOXSTr will prepare the file for accessibility completely, so on BOXSTr’s server side, the file was actually loaded completely but it was the client side which didn’t load the files. Hence, 3MB is deducted from your account.

Bandwidth will usually reset the next day according to the server clock (GMT -8) but if you have not used it all up, it will roll-over to the next day and you will have the option to reset it manually. If the server is doing the job, then why do we need to manually reset it? Sometimes, for some reason, you might want to use the maximum bandwidth for the day (perhaps you’re having a presentation and the last thing you want to know is you ran out of bandwidth) so we have added this convenience for you. Otherwise, in very rare cases, bandwidth does not reset and totally halts at 100% usage even though you have just one file which is 1MB and in a private folder. This is when the tool comes handy.

If you are eligible for a bandwidth reset, it will appear in your dashboard just like in the image I posted above. Otherwise, you are not eligible yet. We are adding more functions to utilize this feature and will ease our users in the future. We know you miss the BOXSTr 1.0 bandwidth stats widget, but we’ll add it back in the v2.0 with more features.

Hope this clears up the bandwidth issues. Should you have any other concerns over bandwidth, you can leave a comment here or start a ticket. You know our support ROCKS ;)

Just a little information about me, I’m Mohammad Mubashar, BOXSTr Support Administrator. If you have submitted a ticket to BOXSTr before, chances are, you received a response from me. I will be spicing up this blog with more information and tips that will enhance your BOXSTr experience and usability. Make sure you have subscribed us in your RSS feeds :)

How to Drag and Drop Files from your Desktop

To Drag and drop files:

Simply log into the desktop application and select upload. Make sure to select the correct folder you wish to upload to first.

Now, take your files from your desktop and drag them into the Desktop App. The files will then show up in each text area. Hit Upload in the top right (you might need to scroll up to see the upload button if you have dragged multiple files.) The upload will now begin. Alternatively, you can also open up folders and drag the files off there into the desktop app. For an example see the above video.

Weekend Move - Expected Outage

Great News! We're moving into the AON Center in downtown Los Angeles this weekend. Bad News - expect some downtime.
During the move I'll keep you up to date on a special thread going on in the community support forum with pictures and all the goodies that come along with moving a few thousand dollars worth of equipment through downtown LA.

The move is expected to begin tomorrow evening around 8PM Eastern Standard time and possibly last through Sunday (5/19/08) at 8PM eastern time. During this time there will likely be some downtime. During the actual move no files will be uploader or downloaded. This will be the time when complete move updates are posted on the forums.

On a side note: BOXSTr will be gaining three additional servers this weekend to keep up with our fantastic growth and to make sure BOXSTr is the best online data management site in the universe.

(FIXED!) Uploading Issues with Internet Explorer

We are aware of issues many Internet Explorer users have been reporting about issues uploading. For those that are unaware; when going to boxstr.com/upload to upload files Internet Explorer returns an error saying "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://boxstr.com/upload

Operation Aborted."

The issue occurs about 60% of the time when trying to load the page. No other browsers are effected at this time.

This issue is being caused by a fault between BOXSTr's javascript and the way Internet Explorer handles it. We're working on a fix for this, but in the meantime, a temporary work around is to download a browser that is actually standards compliant such as Mozilla Firefox, Safari, or Opera.


Again, we are working on a fix for this and hope to have it working properly within 48 hours. You can also avoid the issue by using the BOXSTr Desktop App.

We're still working out bugs, so if you should happen to find any, please report them to support@boxstr.com

Great News IE Users! This issue has been fixed! Happy Uploading!

On a lighter note... our legal team is file suit against the World War Two British Royal Air Force for their blatent copy of BOXSTr's logo. I mean, look... if Apple can file suet against New York City, well BOXSTr can surely take on the British RAF from 65 years ago. We'll see you in court Winston Churchill.

BOXSTr Turns 2.0

Tonight at about midnight eastern time we roll out Release Canidate 1.01 of Version 1.0 of BOXSTr 2.0. :-D

Alright, enough with that. What we really did is redesign the user experience at BOXSTr as well as upgrade many of our current features. Sure the basics are still there, but we plan on adding new features each month and this officially kicks off our plan to redesign the way the world stores their data. You might notice some bugs initially, but we hope to have them all worked out.

A side note: the member profile page is already in for an upgrade (yes, that's right... upgraded before we released it). That feature is set to be out tomorrow evening at midnight EST.

Stay tuned. A lot is changing and it all starts today. If you're ready, then you belong here at BOXSTr.

More details will follow. Love your files!

All the love and as always enjoy,
The BOXSTr Team (also now 2.0)

Tutorials Now Available

We've always believed that the number one feature from BOXSTr, beyond our obvious one, is our World Class Rockin' Support. We've been busy working on new tutorials to help make it easier for you to manage your files on BOXSTr. We will continue to update this section with both step by step tutorials and video presentations on how to complete anything from the most basic tasks to the advanced features BOXSTr has to offer.

Also, we will always be accepting user submitted tutorials on the forums. If you haven't signed up for our community forum, please do so. Get free help from other members and offer some advice to those who need it.

We'll still be available 24/7 through our ticketing system as well. If you ever have any issues, you know where we'll be.

BOXSTr.com We're changing the way the world stores their data!

BOXSTr in WebUser!

BOXSTr makes its first magazine debut in UK's number one computer and web magazine, WEBUSER! Pick up the magazine anywhere quality periodicals are sold in the UK and abroad or order online at http://webuser.co.uk.

If you love BOXSTr, why not recommend us to a friend, or better yet submit your review of BOXSTr to any magazine you think would be interested or other third parties willing to introduce the file revolution that is BOXSTr.com