FileGator: A Look into The Powerful PHP File Management Tool.
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Sunday, August 28, 2016

FileGator: A Look into The Powerful PHP File Management Tool.

Forget the times of ‘There’s an app for that’, PHP scripts are now all the rage! Everyone wants to build their own little something special on the internet and mark their territory. With what we are witnessing on the internet front has been pretty moving and compelling enough to push us to try a few things ourselves. Thinking of file-sharing service for your friends, family, colleagues or business partners with all your rules? ‘There’s a script for that’!


On a daily basis, an average internet user comes across at least two to three websites that share files or manage them online. These files are user-generated; they can be accessed, managed and downloaded by anyone with the download link. So, what we are basically looking at is a file management service that hosts the files on their servers and gives access to the users. Have you ever wondered what if you could make one for yourselves and your group of buddies? You are in for a treat!

Building such a service may not seem like an accomplishable task in any way possible for a person with little-to-none coding background. That’s the beauty of these scripts; just some simple technical tasks and you could see yourself running a high-tech online portal! Today, we are looking at one such script.

What is FileGator?
Let’s get to the basics of this script. Have you ever shared a file or a whole folder with your friends or colleagues? If you answered yes, then this thing is pretty straightforward for you – You are going to build such service - online!
FileGator offers to be a perfect replacement for DropBox, and making the most of FTP file managers is pretty gruesome task for most of them anyway . FileGator could be the script to offer you a perfect multi-user file management service, even for your existing online files.

So, in short, this is a PHP script for managing files that allows an individual to get the script up and running within a few minutes once uploaded to your server. FileGator offers some pretty advanced features for this task, and we’ll be seeing if it really worth all the talk.

Installation and setup
Setting up of scripts are usually dead simple and so need for worrying about how to get this thing up and running. Since there is no need for a database, installation is quite simpler than you would expect. All it takes is just uploading of a few files to your server and you're good to go. If you do own/rent a server for your website, you can simply add a new address, and upload all the contents of this PHP Script.

Management of users is pretty straightforward from the admin dashboard, and we’ll cover that later. Still if you persist of using MySQL database for storing your user information, that is also provided, but is optional and can be overlooked. All configuration options and tweaks are done in a single configuration file. Also, as far as compatibility is concerned, we have had no issues running it on all the major browsers. So, that’s a less thing to worry about!

FileGator features reviewed
Now that you have your new PHP script uploaded to your server, the very next step is to set it up to suit your needs and demands. Here, we are looking deeper into this script, making important configurations and examining everything it has to offer!

-The initial interface

powerful PHP file managment tool

What you see above is the initial interface of your new file managment tool. The PHP script once uploaded to your server gives this impression upon being accessed. So, what we see here are basically the files and folders on your online storage.

The user-friendly interface makes all common file operations easy to find. The files can be sorted by name, date or size.

-Creating new users

powerful PHP file managment tool

You can add as many new users as you wish from your admin dashboard. For this, you would need to login with your admin credentials. Once done, you can add a few users to test the script and a base to start off from. Adding new users is pretty straightforward as seen above.

From your admin dashboard, you can go to ‘Users’. From there, a noticeable button prompts you to add new users or manage user permissions, a part we will come to later. Each user can have its own repository folder or they can share a common one. You can play around with permissions and diffrent folder levels and create power users that can manage other users and their files.

The script has a registration form implemented and with this feature you can accept new users to your service automatically. However, this is disabled by default and has to be enabled inside the configuration file.

-Uploading new files

powerful PHP file managment tool

What purpose would a file managment tool serve if it isn’t managed properly to upload files? Here comes the important part. Once a user logs into his profile, the first thing that he would notice is a big 'Add Files' button. The upload process itself is presented at the screen above. You can easily upload multiply files at once. A few file formats are disabled by the administrator, like you can see above, the .exe files are not allowed for uploading and hence, the message – ‘Filetype not allowed’.
After uploading your files, hit done. These files will be uploaded into the current working directory.

-Generating download links

powerful PHP file managment tool

Download links are the shareable version of the location where the file needs to be downloaded from. Download links form an essential part of a file sharing network and FileGator has covered you pretty much on this front.

Once a file is uploaded, it will show up in the directory as seen above. The settings tool icon beside every file/folder needs to be clicked and you can generate the download link of files and folders. Copy this link, and share with your friends wanting to access the files!

-Sharing download links

powerful PHP file managment tool

What is all the point of creating a file sharing network and including no easy and quick way to share the generated download links? FileGator also provides an easy feature that lets you enter your recipient’s Email address and a message that includes your recently generated download link.
This feature can also be accessed directly from the settings tool icon beside each file.

-Add to Archive

powerful PHP file managment tool

FileGator provides with a simple-yet-efficient system for adding multiple files to a ZIP archive or unpacking the archive directly on your server. You can select multiple files or a whole folders from the checkboxes beside them, then head on to the bottom of the page and you will find a set of buttons, including copy, move, delete and zip. For adding these selected files to a .zip archive in the same directory, select the ‘Zip’ button and you will see just what you see above.
The rest of the features at the bottom are pretty clear – Copy, Delete and move actions. Select them accordingly for your relevant task.

-File sorting and filtering

powerful PHP file managment tool

When the number of files and folders increase in number, the screen might just get a little bit cluttered up. So, you can view the entire files and folders sorting according to their hierarchy by clicking on the button marked with a red circle in the above image. Files can easily be filtered simply by typing in file name or extension in the search box.

-User permissions

powerful PHP file managment tool

As seen in the user creation window, while you set up all the basic information like username, password and directory, there’s a set of ‘permissions’ or ‘user roles’ for each user. These settings define what a user is allowed to with files and folders within the repository.
The basic permissions available are Read, Write and Upload. Files like .txt are editable from the window itself. So a Read and Write permission to a user will allow him to read the .txt and make some changes to it. The upload permission allows the user to upload new files. You can set the permission of a user at the time of creating them. The user permissions however can also be changed later from your admin dashboard.

FileGator features overview

-Mobile

powerful PHP file managment tool

The best part about FileGator is that the website is also mobile-optimized. So all of the file operations could be done on the go! The mobile version would be just as functional as the main script would be, but this feature is only available on the FileGator PRO version that is priced at 25 USD for a single license.

-Multiple Files/Drag-and-drop
FileGator allows multiple files to be uploaded by selecting all the files at once. It also has a drag and drop feature implemented so you can easily trow your files into the browser and the upload will start imediately.

-Search Files/Folders
This tool also provides a built-in search toolbar for filtering files in the current directory simply by typing a part of the name or extension.

-Translatable Interface
The script has a single translation file and it comes with over 10 translated languages including English, French, German, Persian, Russian, Spanish and a few more.
Pricing

The pricing of FileGator starts from a $9 for a regular single-domain license and would cost $25 for a mobile-friendly version called ‘FileGator PRO’.

Conclusion – Our verdict
Given all its features and capabilities, this script takes minimum of server load for operating. All you would need is a decent size of uploading room on your server if you plan to host large files. No coding needed for getting this script running.
Host your files, manage and share them with your friends/colleagues. This definitely is a must-have tool for any webmaster.
You can have a look at the script and the demo here: http://www.file-gator.com/. This script is quite popular at CodeCanyon, given that it has been a ‘Featured’ product over there.


Our Rating – 4.7 out of 5
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4 comments:

  1. Awesome script... tested.. working fine...!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. What are the server requirements. Which PHP and mysql version is required? Also is there any other module need to be loaded on server?

    ReplyDelete

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