Many of you already know about Dumbfiles, which is one of our company’s own projects. If you don’t, let me get you up to speed. Dumbfiles is a free one-click file uploading service that absolutely blows the competition out of the water when it comes to features:

• Upload unlimited files (up to 1GB each file) 20 at a time.
• Unlimited Downloading of files (so you can share the link!)
• No waiting in between files.
• Set up personalized banners for files (for free)
• No premium accounts, everyone gets all the bandwidth (huge pipe)
• The wait is only 5 seconds for members and 10 seconds for non-members, while we prepare the download.
• Unobtrusive ads and no hassles asking you to join for a daily/monthly/annual/ fee.

We conceived it about 2 months ago after seeing how the many other free file host suck. We decided to launch the first phase as an experiment, at the beginning of September, sprinkling in a bit of Adsense here and there. Along the way, we added new features, like personalized ads, which were a big hit with the file uploaders.

A month later, we saw huge growth, bigger that we had imagined. We had made a nice amount of $$ with Adsense, so we decided to redesign the whole thing, add a bunch of features and include different type of ads (of the adult type). We worked on the redesign and the new features for a whole week, spending the most part of the day and night on it. Now, lets get to the before and after shots.

Main Page:

Before:

After

The first thing you notice about the redesign is the new logo. I like to think that the new one is a bit more modern. It did take longer to design.

Old Logo

New Logo

The account page has been completely redesigned. We’ve sprinkled AJAX magic in it through-out. We eliminated tables and changed the colors. Also, the uploading feature has been included directly in the account page.

Before:

After:

The upload page been moved and is now our secondary way to upload. Now this is what you get when you click on the Upload button (and agree to our ToS first):

The download page, where the grand majority of the ads get displayed has had a complete overhaul. It was probably the one that took the longest to redesign. Unfortunately I didn’t get a screenshot of it, but here’s the new version (but trust me, the old one wasn’t great).

And this is the Download page you get when the file (or the user) has been tagged as adult-content.

This prevents (or at least makes people verify) that they are 18 years old or over.

This is the “adult” file download page. NSFW

Notice that all the Google Adsense have been removed, and the “adult” themed banners get displayed (we also have the ability to track each one the the banners to keep and eye on their performance).

Another big improvement we’ve made is the search page. We relied on tables and it wasn’t to eye pleasing. Take a look:

Search Page

Search results

Now, the search feature is directly on the main page, as week as on the account pages, so there’s no need for a separate page for the main search feature. This is how the results are displayed, with the adult filter on:

With the adult filter off:

So, hopefully we’ll be able to grow a lot with all these new features and the redesign. We spent only only about a week redesigning this thing from scratch (which doesn’t seem a lot, be we’re just a team of 2). Check the site for yourself, or rather why don’t you go over to Dumbfiles, and sign up today! Its free!