How do I upload?

Well you have started downloading, now you want to be a real member of the P2P file sharing community and give something back. You have decided to upload something that you think people will want.

The first thing to do is select what you want to upload. This is not as easy as it may sound. You should check to see that no one else has already provided the file. It seems a waste of time uploading a file when it already exists, especially when there are lots of seeds. If the file already exists and there are no seeds then it would be perfectly ok for you to make the file available for people to download.

Ok, so you have selected you file... now what? Well, as you know to download a file you need to go to a torrent tracker and download the appropriate torrent file. So for you to make your files available you need to make a torrent file. Thankfully, those lovely people at BitComet have provided everything you need to create such a torrent file easily.

Simply go to the "File" menu in BitComet and select the option to "Make Torrent...". Now how easy is that?

This opens a new window which allows you to set some options regarding whether the torrent represents a file or a directory. I will upload an old public domain film called "Journey To the Centre Of Time" so that you can see the whole process from begining to end. As you can see, there are only really three things you need to do. Set whether the torrent represents a single file, such as a .zip or .rar archive, an .mp3 music file, a .jpg image file or of course a .exe application or .avi video. Normally we would never create a .torrent file which represents a single image file but place a number of images together into an archive. Alternatively you could simply create a .torrent of a directory. No matter which you choose once you have created the .torrent file you can not change, move or delete the files your are sharing until you have finished sharing. Immediately below the option to change whether the .torrent is to represent a directory or a single file you wil find the second thing you need to do, that is browse for the actual file(s) that you are going to share. I am going to upload a single file so I have selected that option and browsed for my film. As people are going to be downloading this from your computer you want them to get the file as quickly as they can. The quicker they get it, the better it is for you and for them! So do not upload a file unless you have sufficient upload speeds to host the file. We are looking at 30KBs as a minimum.  

Some files are better compressed using programmes such as WinZip, or WinRar. I will not supply links to Linux or Macintosh compression programmes as you have them already and should be used to them by now. Compression ratios vary according to the file type you are trying to compress. For instance, you do not actually get much of a benefit from compressing .MP3s as the MP3 encoding algorithm includes a sophisticated compression system already. However, you can at times, reduce text files by more than half. There is no hard and fast rule. I always compress the files and see how much benefit there is for the downloader. If there is only 1 or 2 MBs difference between the original and the compressed version then I would not bother using the compressed version as it adds another step for the end users and can increase problems for them such as having to find the correct decompression program etc. So keep it simple. It took me about 30 minutes to compress the film and I got a benefit of only 3%.The original file size was 742MB and the new file size is 719MB. This means that using the archived file version will save the end users 23MB of downloading. Take into account that they will be downloading at a maximum of 30KBs from you thats roughly 3 seconds per MB or 69 seconds. So in perfect conditions an end user will get the file in 1 minute and 9 seconds less time. It may not sound a lot, but if you have 2000 people downloading that means you get them off your system 38 hours and 33 minutes quicker... I say that's good enough for me!

Finally, you need to add which trackers this .torrent should be associated to. MiniNova suggests the following open trackers. That is trackers you do not have to register to.

• http://open.tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce
• http://denis.stalker.h3q.com:6969/announce
• http://www.torrentsnipe.info:2701/announce

These get added to the section which says "Tracker Server and DHT Network Node List:". Then you should copy the bottom TextBox which holds the path to the Generated .Torrent File. Next Go to Mininova In the blue menu bar at the top you will see an option for uploading your torrent; select that option. There is a TextBox available which you should paste your .torrent path into. Remember you copied it from the Torrent Maker window earlier. If you did not copy it, you will needBrowse for your torrent.  

Select the Category, for me it would be Movies -> Sci-Fi. Add the Internet Movie Database Number (IMDb). From here you can add a description, either taken from the Internet or one you created yourself. Enter the Human Verification text and press submit.

Guess what? You just uploaded your very first .torrent. However, it is not quite finished yet. Keep an eye on your torrent. Do not move or delete the files until at least two people have downloaded 100% of the data. If after a few weeks no one has downloaded, or connected to your torrent. Then it would be okay to ditch the torrent, and consider uploading something people would actually want. Or, if the file is of a particularly specialist nature, search for a specialist tracker dedicated to your genre and I am sure it will be greately appreciated there. Anyway, now that you have upoloaded, you have officially become a full member of the BitTorrent Community. Upload good quality material regulary and you will become recognised and loved the world over! Happy BTing.