Below are the steps to create and distribute the .torrent file, and begin the seeding.

1.Decide what you want to share. A torrent can contain either a single file, or a directory of many files. This is often quite convenient, since it avoids the step of creating an archive (.zip, .rar, etc.) if you need to store multiple files. For example, if you are sharing a 2-CD movie, put both of the files in a directory and create a torrent for that, rather than zipping the files and then creating a torrent for the single archive file.

IMPORTANT NOTE! Despite what I would call common sense and courtesy, I see people doing stupid things at this point all the time! For example, if the file you are sharing was originally posted to Usenet and came in a number of parts (.RAR, .R00, .R01), do not put those parts in an archive and then create a torrent of that. Most media files are already compressed, and rar-ing or zip-ing them just adds an additional step for everyone that receives the files. And for the love of $DEITY, do not include the parity files in your torrent! In summary, if the end product you are sharing is an .AVI file, create a torrent for that. This makes it easier for people to hold on to the original form of the torrent, and this tends to lead to it being shared longer. If you distribute your AVI file as an RAR containing 33 parts, which itself contains a ZIP, then people will trudge through the processing of the files to get the AVI, and then most likely delete the original since it's in a form that is useless to them. Therefore, they cannot (re-)seed the torrent since they've lost the original format. Finally, you do your part to put an end to the neverending stream of "How do I open .R00 files?" questions. (end opinionated rant)

2.Run maketorrent. »www.dessent.net/btfaq/#utils (If you are sharing a single file, click the (file) button, otherwise click the (dir) button. In either case a file dialog will appear, and you should select the file/directory that you wish to share.

3.Enter the tracker's announce url in the space provided, or use the drop-down list to select from one of a common list of trackers. Remember, if you use a site's tracker when creating a .torrent file, plan to upload/post the file to that community. You can also add a comment, but it's optional.

4.Select the piece size, or just accept the default value of (auto). In general, the smaller the piece size, the more efficient the BitTorrent download will be, but will result in a larger .torrent file. 256 kB seems to be the most common piece size in use these days, but you can experiment with other settings if you want. Avoid very large piece sizes for small files; likewise avoid small piece sizes for very large files.

5.Click create torrent to begin the process of creating the file. You can then select if you want to create a single .torrent for all the files in the directory, or a number of separate .torrents. Most of the time you want a single .torrent for the whole folder, unless you know what you're doing. When finished, you should find a newly created .torrent file in the same directory as the file/directory you selected to share.

6.Upload this .torrent file to a web server. Usually this means going to the web page of the site whose tracker you used and clicking the "Upload torrent" link. The procedure varies from site to site, but it's usually always explained in a FAQ link or forum posting. If you are running your own web server (and have configured it appropriately) then upload the file to your server's public web space, or whatever method you use to put files on your server.

7.Finally, you must seed the file. Until this step, nothing but metadata has been transferred. Seeding is necessary to actually transmit your file to others. There are several ways to do this, but the simplest is to use your ordinary BitTorrent client just as you would with any other file. Navigate to the page on the web server where your .torrent is posted, click the link, and when the BitTorrent client starts be sure to select the same file/ directory that you used in maketorrent in step 2 above. The client should check the files and verify that they are complete, and then connect to the tracker and begin seeding.

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by Bolt Pride edited by removed
last modified: 2004-10-22 16:59:40