The Story Behind idzr

Back in late 2007, I joined MTF and started making icons, at the forum, I found some interesting short urls that directly connect to a file or a website, at the time, those links are from dznr.org. There were some other file sharing services, which one I remember is QuickShareIt, just its links were longer.

Actually, I did not find any motivation to get an account of those service, I just uploaded my files and images to server, pasted the full link to the forum to share my icons or screenshots. I found it was the easiest method for me.

In the Nest of Blue Bird

Later in early 2008, I started using the popular web service out there, the Twitter. 140 characters limitation is somewhat forced you to use short URLs. There is TinyURL for links, but none for files ¹.

By using twitter, you can discovered many dznr-URL in tweets, mostly by cool people, but it was disappointed that, when you found threads on MTF said “No dznr invite asking post”. So, I never asked for an invite or did any @reply, DM or email to Philipp Antoni for an dznr account.

I remember there was one called h4xr at this time, but there is something missing, which is important for me, that is the view count and the files-organisation panel. Without them it is like throwing a file to some outer space and you can’t ever control it anymore (like doing something simple as delete). Anyway, h4xr was discontinued later.

Motivation is what gets you started

The situation at the moment was, no suitable file sharing service with what I needed for me. That is why I start making my own.

The goal was simple, just have to do the following:

• easy way to upload, no need to launch a FTP client
• generate short URLs, and auto copy to clipboard
• Views count
• A platform to view, delete all uploaded files
• Protected, need username and password to access ²

So simple, right? For any web programmers, yes, they are so simple, but I knew nothing about any of web programming at the time.

I started learning PHP with online tutorials, documents, etc. Finally I figure out just PHP might not enough, again I ate some MySQL fastfood-like-tutorials too.

Turned out it worked, at least I could upload a file and share it with short URL with a web form, around this time, I purchased the domain idzr.org too. To be honest, I cannot think a good name within 4 characters and sounds cool, it is highly inspired by dznr and h4xr.

It was very happy, while you did something worked, especially you were like dummy for web programming 2-3 weeks ago. I shared the result to few friends (not real life friends, but friends I met on web), they are excited too, and some of them would like to use it.

Ripoff of DZNR?

Development continued, extended it from single user to multiple users, webpage for organisation, widget come later.

By designing the interface or considering the features, yes, I wanted to take a look inside dznr, as it was already well-made platform. However, I did not have a chance to get in, one thing I could see publicly is the looks of the widget in some people’s screenshots.

I don’t know if it should called it ripoff or not, if you don’t ever see the original, and just created basic functions that are the same ³.

It is not for anthing but my need

You may find there are many new file sharing service out there these days, some of them promotes, spam the twitter timeline, make noise, whatever. Because some of them are planned for making money, sponsored by ADs.

No, I do not say it is wrong to make money by providing decent service. I just want to point out that idzr is not for making money in anyway (unless you think donation counts).

Goal for idzr was made and still is made for my personal need, I need a way to share url easily, so I created bookmarklet for that (I thought you have to drag url in widget to shorten it for dznr), I want to share text and so there is markdown-powered text sharing. After more of my friends used idzr, I found while tap the idzr-URL on iPhone, the big picture loads quite a long time, so there is iPhone-optimized image view.

I am not going to complete with other service, I just want it to fit my need, that is all.

Invitation & Limitation

In the early days of idzr, there was nothing called invitation system, I just created my friends’ account by adding a row inside MySQL directly. Invitation system was made just after some of users asked if they can invited to their friends, I do not want to do it manually, so there is so called an invitation system.

You may hate these kind of invite-only services, I do not know about why those money-making-services are invite only, but if I am not wrong, dznr, kttns, itiz, h4xr, those cost are paid by their owners, same as idzr. That is the reason why they are not opened to public, it is impossible to open to public without large amount of fund support, even a website got digg-ed will down. A large amount of files download and upload service, will down instantly (may be can last for a few weeks) for sure if it is open to public to use, at least for a site like idzr which is hosting on a grid-server (hosting which is sharing with few others on same server).

All-in-one

Is it possible to combine all these services to one? Even it is possible, a prefect one is made, if it is still a invite only service, what is the point?

If you talk about a decent file sharing service that is not free, there is one thing called Dropbox⁴, the link is not shorten but I guess you can use some URL shortener like idek, which counts clicks. Is it worth to make another one?

In addition, QuickShareIt is now updated with shortenURL built-in.