I'm really needing to revamp the way I store files. I have no experience setting up an intranet, so I was looking for an external solution for hosting my client files, contracts, and fully automating a paperless system.

I basically just need to allow my team to login to a site/file directory to download files when needed.

I currently use xdrive (5gb free), but want to know what others are using in case there is a easier solution. Any ideas?

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Steve Castaneda, Realtor
Keller Williams Realty
The MyHomeHouston Team

Specializing in Houston Real Estate. Feel free to visit my Houston Real Estate Blog or read about Real Estate Technology for agents.

We have actually considered this as a service, just didn't think there was much interest. Ideally you would want it ultra secure with both username and password protection as well as IP restrictions for access. Wouldn't be to hard to set up on a cheap dedicated server really, depends on your ability to program and manage linux really.

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Incidentally, we recommend backing up and keeping a hard copy of all your documents on disk away from the physical location of your files or computer (In case of fire etc) at minimum, this should be done once a month

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Want to save up to 50% off Real estate webmasters product websites & common upgrades? Check out my latest blog post regarding our end of the year sale.

Cool; you are correct. It would have to be super-lid-tight, yet easily accessible to the right people. I'm sure the disk space area would be pretty easy to setup (thinks of an FTP like environment), its the front end administration tool that I'm worried about.

I'm not about to teach my team how to use an FTP client. hehe.

For backup, I actually copy my files to a CD-RW (moving to a flash drive very soon), and it has been working out pretty good, given the cheap cost of burnable CD's now-a-days.

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Steve Castaneda, Realtor
Keller Williams Realty
The MyHomeHouston Team

Specializing in Houston Real Estate. Feel free to visit my Houston Real Estate Blog or read about Real Estate Technology for agents.

I also use Xdrive, but sometimes it's down and other times it runs way too slow... nevertheless, it's the best free solution that I've tried in terms of storage size and bandwidth.

There are a ton of others... Here are a few other online storage type sites that I've also tried out:

http://www.omnidrive.com/
http://www.esnips.com/
http://totoexpress.com/

They all offer a little something different. There may be one there that fits your needs.

Otherwise, setting up a company intranet may be the way to go. It probably doesn't have to be as complicated as you think.

I've setup "intranets" for companies using open source wiki platforms. There's a ton of these out there, as well. Here's a pretty good resource on wiki's...

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2...hich_wiki.html

I've only used phpwiki, but there are others that appears to be a lot more robust.

Currently, I have my own client extranet setup using:

http://www.activecollab.com/

It's basically the open source version of BaseCamp and I love it.

I've also used:

http://www.geeklog.net/

Which is actually a blogging platform, but there are plugins available that enabled me to create an intranet/extranet exactly for what I needed.

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---cK

CK Chung is an independent SEO consultant who provides premium Holistic SEO services, including services specific to Real Estate SEO. You can find his alter-ego, Kid Disco, spouting off on his SEO blog at SEOdisco.

Keller Williams had some kind of online office when I was with them. You could up load folders, read documents, etc. It was pretty neat ... except that nobody in the office used it. I think it was hosted by Intranets.com.

What we're doing is a lot more simple. We're entirely paperless (well, we keep hard copy originals in a file cabinet for backups). We have a Dell 1600n laser printer, fax, scanner, copier. We scan EVERYTHING that we get to the PC and save it as a PDF in a folder for the appropriate client. The incoming faxes are automatically emailed to us as PDF's and we save them as well. Everything for everyone (photos, cma, presentations, etc.) is on the server. This is probably typical for anyone even remotely technical.

The way we access it is through windows terminal services. I created an account with a DDNS provider (free) and installed their client on one of my workstations. Then, I can use Windows remote desktop to access my PC from anywhere in the world. I can even copy files back and forth between the office and the local machine. It works pretty well ... you just need a fast connection (cable modem or better).

Notes: WinXP has a limit on the number of simultaneous connections via Remote Desktop. There's a patch that gets around the limitation. Also, RD has several security holes by default and you'll need to patch those.

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