which HTTP file server, like HFS?

what would actually be ideal would be something like rapidshare, where I can give out a link to a file, and then the user can download it with the right password.... Something that is easy for me to add files quickly and super easy for the other person to use for downloading. Does anything like that exist? All the file explorer addons I tried are way too complex for what I need.

What ReadyNAS do you have (if duo or NV+, also let us know if it is V1 or V2).

Also do you need password protection for the download? You could alternatively package them into a zip file (with a password).

I have Ultra2+ with Raidiator 4.2.20.

Yes I want to password protect.

If there are not too many downloaders, you can create a user/password for each one on the NAS.

From there, you can create a shared folder for each downloader that you and the downloader has access rights to. This share can be accessed over the internet by either FTP or HTTPS (or both), depending on what services you enable for the share. You would also need to forward the appropriate ports in your router, and use ddns to get a URL.

There are a number of ways to accomplish this, however, it would be better if you could provide a few scenarios of what you're trying to do.

For example:

a) do you want to make these files available to anyone with the password, or specific people?
b) do you require separate credentials for each user?
c) does each user have access to the same files?

1. HTTP file-sharing is built into the NAS and you can easily stuff on your NAS. Users could be required to enter a username/password to access the files on the website and they would have access to whatever files are in that share.

2. Use ReadyNAS Remote. This would be for trusted users (friends, family, etc.) to access the NAS directly over an encrypted tunnel. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEBqP-m2404 & http://www.readynas.com/?cat=52. They would have access to whatever shares you select.

3. Setup a Wordpress Blog (via community add-on). You can host files on password-protected pages.

4. Use WebDAV: http://www.readynas.com/?p=126. Same sort of access as #1 & 2 above.

Using the built in NAS authentication might work, but I do sorta hate having to add each of them as actual NAS users, but maybe there is no other way. Also I prefer not to display the Netgear logo page for them to access the files. Does anyone know if its possible to override the html they will see, still having them authenticate?

https://nasname/sharename will bring them right to their share w/o the main page. Of course nasname would need to be a ddns or dns name.

In addition to dbott67's suggestions, you can also create your own web interface (http://www.readynas.com/?p=135), and install a php-based file server (PHPfileNavigator for instance) Without knowing more about your intended usage, it is hard to say what is best.

yep, last night I did some looking around for some PHP based stuff. So my next proj will be to get my ReadyNAS working as a real web server that serves HTML pages, and see if it works with PHP5.3 that I bought from Who Cares or if I have to do something else to get that working. Once I have it serving up PHP, then I will try some of those I saw, like the one you mentioned, and some others. Perhaps they will work fine enough.

The community addon repo has a few also, but they all tend to be "Explorer" replacements, which work totally great, but I want something a little more simple that is brain dead easy for the end user to download or upload something, and to easily provide a sandboxed file area for each of them as well. Virtual users.

Anyway, if you feel like it, check out HFS: http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/, they really did it right. Unfortunately it only runs on windows and does not have a deamon mode. It has its windows GUI for configuration. But the view it presents to users through HTML is exactly the right level of complexity, clean, simple, virtual user sandboxes, easy to download whole folder, uploading, etc.

The client interface looks somewhat similar to FileZilla

that client interface is not the HTML interface, that is the administration windows gui. The end user UI is pure HTML, there is only one screenshot of it. FileZilla is an FTP client. HFS is nothing like that.