Many of my clients are moving to podcasting or at least want the ability to put audio on their websites. I had used MediaMax as the audio server I would get them set up with. The problem is MediaMax has a habit of not working acceptably for … MONTHS (true even for clients using their paid service)! So I began looking for options that were 1) affordable for my clients for whom audio is not a central component of their web presence and 2) that would be reliable and fast. Enter Amazon S3.

S3 is a simple storage service that is fast, reliable and cost-effective (even for non-profit organizations). I have started moving all my clients off MediaMax and onto Amazon S3. In S3 your files are stored in “buckets” (directories) and many commercial entities are using S3 for their storage (e.g., SmugMug).

Tools for Amazon S3

The only trick in using S3 is that traditional FTP clients generally won’t work with their web service, unless you run Panic’s FTP client Transmit 3 on a Mac. I use both, though prefer my PC and there are options.

UpRight 1.2: Easy S3 Uploading

One tool to give your clients for very easy upload to their S3 space (on a PC) is Otaku’s UpRight 1.2 application. Installation is easy and the interface is user friendly, which is especially important if you are deploying Upright to a less than tech savvy user who has the responsibility of loading the audio or any files to an S3 bucket. This is the case with some of the organizations with which I work. Having a very easy way for assistants to upload files always increases my development productivity.

There was only one trick that did not seem as obvious to me as it could have been when setting up a new S3 Location in UpRight. When you enter your public and private keys for S3 you are then asked for the name of your S3 bucket. If the user has not yet made a bucket, it is not obvious what to do. Otaku does have documentation on their website that helped me. The answer: Just enter the name of the new bucket.

Over all, Upright is incredibly easy to use (and fast). To upload all that is required of the user is to right click the file and then choose the S3 bucket to which they would like to upload the selected file. However, if you need a client that will allow you to browse the contents on S3, you’ll need to try another application. This would be a feature that I would like to see Otaku Software add to UpRight.