Xposted on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45594796

Here’s a more comprehensive technical guide that goes over in depth some of the terms you will encounter when talking about cloud storage in general: https://absolutedestiny.dreamwidth.org/190827.html . I wanted to create my own, but theirs goes into some additional technical detail that I do not get into here.

Additionally, here's my guide for podfic hosts in general if you decide backblaze: [Meta] A Breakdown of Podfic Hosting Options.

Backblaze Limits (additional details at end of guide):

Storage limit of 10 GB (but additional is actually pretty cheap as of 3/8/2023).

Bandwidth limit of 1GB per day. Resets every day.

How To Guide

If you want larger images, you can find them full size here: https://imgur.com/a/bjRCVOM

1) Signup here: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html

2) Once you are signed up with an email address you’ll be taken here:

3) Click to create your bucket. We will need to make the “Files in the Bucket” be public so you will need to verify your email address. There should be a prompt in the “create a bucket” window to do so. Follow the instructions they send you.

4) Now we’re ready to create the bucket - choose public, no encryption, no object lock

6) Now that the bucket is created we’ll see a button for CORS Rules. Don’t need to care too much about this other than, this is what will allow AO3 to use the embedded <audio> tag. Click on the CORS Rule button.

7) Choose the “share everything in this bucket with this one origin” option and put in ao3’s url: https://archiveofourown.org/

8) Now to the uploading. Click the Upload/Download button

9) That will take you to this page. The key note here is once you upload you cannot change file name or location. If you decide later you want to reorganize your bucket, you will need to reupload to the new location. Backblaze does not let you move your files around.

10) Once a file has been uploaded there will be a little (i) icon to the right of the file. Click on it.

11) They give you 3 urls:

The Friendly URL

The S3 URL

The Native URL

I actually emailed them about this and, at least from the person I spoke to, they said there was no difference between the URLs and they are all good for long term use. When I was pressing about the differences between the S3 URL and the Friendly URL they told me: “All URL's are treated the same” and that the difference is just how they link to the file. Which makes sense.
This was great in my case because I found the “Friendly URL” was actually getting flagged as Phishing by my antivirus software. I was able to switch to the “S3 URL” without any trouble.
I urge you to test the URL you choose but outside of that you are done! You can copy any of the three links and paste it into ao3 😁

Embedding the Audio

For the embedded audio tag:
<audio src="FRIENDLY_OR_S3_URL" controls="controls" crossorigin="anonymous" preload="metadata"></audio>

Or how it’d look with an actual URL

<audio src="https://golbpodficsdemo.s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com/star+wars/Playing+Dumb.mp3" controls="controls" crossorigin="anonymous" preload="metadata"></audio>

For just a simple hyperlink:
<a href="FRIENDLY_OR_S3_URL" rel="nofollow">[link to backblaze]</a>

Or how it’d look with an actual URL

<a href="https://golbpodficsdemo.s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com/star+wars/Playing+Dumb.mp3" rel="nofollow">[link to backblaze]</a>

Storage Limits Errors

If you do get up to the 10GB limits, and you do not put a credit card on your account for them to charge you for the extra space, this is what will happen:

When you reach the 7.5 GB mark, you will receive an email that looks like this:

Then when you reach the 10 GB mark, you will start seeing this error when you try and upload a file:

Download limits:

So, honestly, this is the most transparent of the services I’ve seen for the download limits. Many storage systems have them but are less transparent about what they are. What this means is they only allow so many people to stream/download your podfic per period of time. So, for example, if you have a single podfic that's 500MB (i.e half a GB) only two people will be allowed to stream/download it every day.

And honestly with the traffic that podfic gets, 1 GB download bandwidth is usually more than sufficient.

When you download 750 MB file (aka 75% of 1 GB), you will get this email:

When you reach the cap, you will see this in the backblaze UI