recommendations on free file-hosting sites?

[ccexplore]

Yahoo! Geocities is closing down by end of October this year, so I'll greatly appreciate it if you guys have any recommendations on what else I could use to host files like Lemmings levels, solutions, screenshots, etc., that sort of thing for free.  I suppose there's the Lemmings File Archive, but there may be cases where I would want an alternate location, particular for files meant to be shared to only a few people and are subjected to changes (eg. levels in development or something).

I know the free ones tend to have annoying popup ads, that's not too much of an issue as long as it's not ridiculous.

Thanks!

[geoo]

While I'm not using it myself, I've frequently noticed http://www.fileden.com/ being recommended. It seems that you have to register an account there, but only being on the downloading end, I've positively noticed that they allow for direct linking, i.e. no redirection or popups whatsoever.

[Dullstar]

MediaFire is fine, although I don't like all the ads.  Of course, I pretty much hate ALL ads.

[ccexplore]

While I'm not using it myself, I've frequently noticed http://www.fileden.com/ being recommended. It seems that you have to register an account there, but only being on the downloading end, I've positively noticed that they allow for direct linking, i.e. no redirection or popups whatsoever.

Sounds interesting.  I'm still too busy to try it out right now, but it just occurred to me (from another post by minimac) that another useful criteria is some control over the URLs.  For example, if abc.zip ends up as something like http://<really long path>/<some pseudorandom hash with nothing resembling "abc.zip"> for a download link, it may not work well for something like screenshots for a levelset review game or something, say.  Whereas if it's something a little more reasonable like "http://www.thesite.com/theusername/abc.zip", that would obviously be much, much better.  How's fileden.com in this regard?

[Fernito]

I'm a happy MediaFire user No waiting times, unlimited capacity and amount of downloads/uploads, relatively high per-file size limit (100 MB), pretty decent download servers for being a free service, etc.

Never tried fileden.com though, so it might be better.

[geoo]

The link format seems to be www.fileden.com/files/[date of registration]/[user ID]/filename.ext, e.g. www.fileden.com/files/2009/10/2/1234567/filename.ext, so everything up to the filename always stays the same.
According to the FAQ, it seems that using subdirectories is possible.

But yeah, I haven't used it myself, I just liked that it allows for hotlinking.
A slight downside according to the FAQ might be this:
Free accounts' files are automatically deleted if the account remains innactive for 60 days or more - we send multiple email reminders from 30 days of inactivity onwards however to warn you of this. In order for your account to be marked 'active' again you simply need to re-login.

[Mindless]

I suppose there's the Lemmings File Archive, but there may be cases where I would want an alternate location, particular for files meant to be shared to only a few people and are subjected to changes (eg. levels in development or something).

I've sent you an invitation to Dropbox, I think it might be what you're looking for.  There are only a few things that you might not like in using it for hosting: index.html doesn't get served up automatically for a directory; and along the same lines, you don't get directory listings.

Since there are no directory listings, it's easy to make something publicly accessible for people who know the link but keep it secret from everyone else.

I know the free ones tend to have annoying popup ads, that's not too much of an issue as long as it's not ridiculous.

No ads, and here's an example of what a link might look like: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/112721/temp/index.html
The number in that link is my user id, and is constant.  Inside my public directory, there's a directory named temp which contains index.html and an image file.