FileFront

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**FileFront**

URL	http://www.filefront.com/
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Video Games
Registration	Not Required
Owner	Ziff Media Group
Created by	FileFront, LP.
Launched	1999
Current status	Active

FileFront is a computer game and video game download service that provides patches, demos, modifications and other user generated game related content.

1 Main Site
2 Network & Forums
3 Downtime
4 Download Managers
5 FastPasses
6 Trivia
7 Notes
8 See also
9 External links

[edit] Main Site

The main focus of FileFront is to provide a download service to its users, from its Houston-based servers. In addition to this, FileFront also provides some gaming-related news and articles. The news and articles are provided by Computer Gaming World, a sister-site and offspring from Ziff Davis Media, which owns both sites.

[edit] Network & Forums

FileFront Network is a collection of over forty specific game-related sites dedicated to providing news and files to its visitors. Each one of these sites has its own unique color scheme and style, but the layout maintains the fundamental principals of each other network site to provide a uniform feeling from site to site. Typically each network site will be named after the game it provides for, usually in abbreviated form, along with the suffix 'files'. For instance, the network site catering for Half Life 2 is called 'HL2Files' and the site for the game 'Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis' uses 'OFPFiles'. Each site may also be accessed via a subdomain which is typically formatted as 'gamename.filefront.com'. The Network is constantly expanding and shrinking as new games are released and older games die out, leaving new sites to be created and older ones to be archived.

Due to the nature of these sites, people who create unofficial add-ons for the game, or "modders", are a large part of the community as well as the players who wish to stay informed about things related to that game. The sites also provide patches and updates for the games they cover, as well as trailers and demos for upcoming games. FileFront Network sites tend to launch in the weeks coming up to a game's release, however occasionally sites launch on a games release date or later. Each site has a corresponding forum for discussions such as help with games' technical issues and clan recruitment as well as general chat about the game. Every FileFront Network site's forums are located on FileFront Forums, which is an area separate from FileFront Network.

FileFront Forums are a large community of around 3 Million contributions (or 'posts' as they are called on the site) and over 150,000 members covering a range of countries, ranging from gamers discussing upcoming game releases to philosophers debating in The Pub, as well as general browsers looking for something that interests them. As such, the forums are not limited to just game-related discussion, but also general topics such as sports, art and graphics.

Originally, the forums were a combination of FilesNetwork (predecessor to FileFront Network)'s forums, IO Error's forums, and Voodoo Extreme's (VE3D) forums. Posts date back to 1998, but the majority of articles viewable today have been made after 2001.

The FileFront Forums are governed by roughly fifty moderators, ten super moderators and four administrators. These members have the ability to edit, delete, move and merge threads and posts made within the forum, and the administrators control the technical aspects of the site.

A section of the forums were dedicated to users' images, called the Image Gallery. Here, users used to be able to upload their own images and write a description about them (The Image Gallery has since been removed from the forums, and there is no ETA on when it will be back. Although members have requested that it is brought back). Larger questions about graphics are placed in The Graphics Department forum, where a group of members called the FileFront Graphics Team offer advice.

Users requiring technical help with their computers often make use of the Tech Discussion forum, where articles about technology itself are also written.

[edit] Downtime

FileFront had large periods of downtime in 2005 including an almost 2 week outage in April when services failed after being moved from Los Angeles to Houston. Another large period of downtime for user added files occurred in August and sporadic downtime continued well into September. Many users were turned off to the by these outages and its traffic suffered greatly. Since the last quarter of 2005, FileFront made many changes to its distribution architecture and has managed to remain stable.

A more recent example of downtime began occurring around February 8th, 2007. Following some routine maintenance, complications arose which brought the network to a three-day stand-still. While this incident froze the network's day-to-day operations, file downloads were still fully operational throughout. FileFront's main site and forums were not affected.

[edit] Download Managers

FileFront does fully support most download managers but does not support multiple connections for enhanced speeds on slower connections. Many download managers return errors when downloading from the site for download attempts after the first connection.

[edit] FastPasses

A member may purchase a 'FastPass' on the main site, which provides an alternative set of users in the event that general public servers are unavailable. There is no guarantee of speeds for purchasing a FastPass and many users have reported FastPass services as being slower than freely available public servers. The purchase of a FastPass also removes advertisements from the main site, network sites and forums. With the vast expansion of broadband internet access and decreasing bandwidth prices for providers the FastPass is considered a relegated product.

[edit] Trivia

FileFront Network was originally named FilesNetwork, and was launched in 2001 by its founder, Jos 'Pro-Filer' Jongejan. After FileFront purchased the Network in 2004, Pro-Filer remained as the manager of FileFront Network.
FileFront's Forums have been through several different names and incarnations, Including Gaming Forums, FileFreak Forums, and FileFront Forums.
FileFront was bought by the Ziff Davis Media Game Group in the late half of 2005. FileFront was already experiencing rapid growth before the purchase, this growth stalled shortly after the acquisition.
FileFront was first launched in December of 2001, and created by I/O Error Development.