We all love downloading music, documents and videos, but the whole P2P system is not about taking from others without giving back. Rather, it’s about sharing with the community and improving a network that is bigger than the sum of its parts. Sharing files on Ares Galaxy is incredibly easy, but if you are a bit lost, don’t worry and read on, because we’re going to make it even easier for you.
Sharing Downloaded Files
By default, the option is turned on to share anything you’ve downloaded through the Ares network (this does not include bittorrents though) with other people. Unless you’ve changed the option, Ares Galaxy will have created a folder on your desktop called “My Shared Folder” which contains all the files you’ve downloaded.
For most people, this folder will already contain all files you want to share, so you won’t have to do anything, except keep a copy in that folder, in order to share the files on the network. The above screenshot shows the Library, which should contain the files you have downloaded.
Scanning Your System
In the Control Panel, there is an auto-scan feature under the Filesharing tab. This is a neat Ares galaxy function that will scan your whole system, looking for files to share. After the scan is done, you’ll be able to choose which files and documents you want to share with the world, so don’t worry, it won’t automatically share everything on your PC.
Configuring Folders
Clicking the tab next to the auto-scan feature will bring you to the manual folder configuration menu. Here you can pick the folders you want to share with other Ares Galaxy users. Be aware that if you select a folder, you’ll be sharing everything in it, including all subfolders, so don’t make any mistakes or you’ll end up sharing you entire hard drive!
A red contour around the checkbox next to a folder just means that at least one subfolder is shared, like the legend states.
Making Exceptions
Finally, what if you want to share a certain folder, but you want to exclude certain files from being shared with the world through Ares Galaxy? One solution would be to simply remove the file from the shared folder, but this would mean that you can’t use the excellent integrated library to organize your files.
A second way of making exceptions to the sharing rules of a certain folder is to manually “unshared” files by right clicking on them in the library and selecting the “Share/Unshare” option. If you unshare a file, it will remain in the library, but it will be recognizable by the lack of the hands icon next to the title. Right click on it again and choose the same option if you want to share it again.
These are the basics of file sharing on the free Ares Galaxy network. You can also use torrents or direct chat connections to share it with the whole network or with specific people, but we will discuss this at a later time.