Hi, I currently own a photography business (www.christopher-mackenzie.com) And I want to start an ftp server so that clients can access their pictures anytime.

I've tried using yahoo, but between the super slow loads and constantly getting yelled at for various reasons, I want to use a spare computer I have lying around. (everything is set up to GET to the computer from the net, ex: dyndns, router forwarding, etc.)

I want a good FTP server, that has an interface more like e-commerce software in the way the user navigates, Instead of having them browsing meaningless files and clicking on each one to open it. I want them to go into their "area" after logging in and browsing the files like they were at their computer. I've tried phpbb3 because i thought it would work the way I wanted it to, but that was a fail on itself.

And one more thing that makes things tricky, Is i need a freeware type of o/s or software (I have ubuntu and xp at my disposal if i need them) but I don't even know what to look for. Any input is appreciated!

a quick google search for "freeware ftp server" yeilds several hits
among them are:
http://www.tucows.com/preview/195559#MoreInfo

you may also want to search

http://www.majorgeeks.com

I used FileZilla for a while, and liked it a lot. Check it out.

Yes. FileZilla is trully great pice of software with i can recommend too.

I currently use (and like) ALFTP. (it provides both FTP client and server). But will have to check out Filezilla as well

crossftp is really nice and simple also

I dont think FTP was the right term to ask the question with. I can set up a wamp server and ftp piece of cake. I want some software or code that allows a user to log in and have a graphical screen to cruise around, like say photobucket. An ftp no matter how nice it is (filezilla is nice, ive used that in the past) it still dosent help the fact that my customers must double click every icon to see the picture instead of seeing thumbnails.

this can be a hassle since they are full quality uncompressed images, and not all of us have a 10mbps internet connection

so now, how about replies on it from this angle?

Common sense tells one to type it into google, its a waste of forum space to even write that.

Understand your need. While there are applications for the PC which show thumbnails for the current selected directory (eg Photoshop, EasyShare), I've never seen such a feature on a web server.

It is possible to post process uploaded pictures so that a directory would contain
small pictures-as-links-->true full image created by automation,
but the small images would still need to be produced

Your problem might be more an issue of what your clients are running as their FTP client vs. what you are running as the FTP server.

So, for example, you'll find FTP clients like CoreFTP which say they support thumbnail views of the remote directory
>> It appears it's for their "registered" versions (not certain if that's the free version or not)
>> Don't know what arrangements or if you have any say about your client's s/w
>> You'll also need to checkout CoreFTP yourself. i have no personal knowledge other then what i skimmed through on their website