How To Use FTP To Upload Web Pages To Web Server

SingaporeWebHosting.com

Home | Linux Hosting | Windows Hosting | Email Hosting | Domain Name | Web Design | Web Promotion | Reseller | Servers

Current Special

1 Year Free Web Hosting
included in our
Web Design Service

Home
Unix Hosting
Windows Hosting
Email Hosting
Domain Name
Web Design
Web Promotion
Reseller Plan
Dedicated Server
Support
FAQ
Resources

About Us
Contact Us

Singapore Web Hosting > Support

How To Use FTP?

What is FTP?

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the simplest and most secure way to exchange files over the Internet.

Although you can upload web pages via online control panel, most Webmasters choose FTP to upload or download files. It's faster and more reliable.

FrontPage and Dreamwaver have built-in FTP features. But they're very buggy. (Please do NOT use them to transfer web pages to our server:-). You should use standalone FTP applications such as WS_FTP. The LE version is free to download.

(Update: IPswitch has stopped distrubuting the free version of WS_FTP. Luckily there're many free FTP software on the Internet. Go to download.com and seach for "FTP".)

How to use FTP?

It's not as hard as it sounds to use FTP. Just follow these simple steps.

I take WS_FTP as example here. Any other FTP software should work similarly.

Step 1 - Connect to the Internet.

Step 2 - Launch WS_FTP LE.

Step 3 - Connect to your web site:

When WS_FTP LE first launches, it opens the Session Properties window.  Here is where you select which FTP site you want to connect to for this session.

From this Session Properties window, click on the "New" button.

All fields should go blank. Now you can create a new FTP site "Profile". The following information is what you'll need to connect to your Website:

Check 'Save Password' so that you don't have to re-enter it every time you want to upload files.

Now click the "Apply" button.  Congratulations, you have successfully created an "FTP Profile" in WS_FTP LE!

Click on the OK button and WS_FTP LE will connect you to your site.

Step 4 - Transfer files

Your screen should now look like this:

The left-hand side is a view of the files on your 'Local System' (your computer). The right-hand side is a view of the files on the 'Remote System' (Your web site server).

To transfer files between the left and right side, highlight a file and click on one of the two arrows located in between the panes.

The default view of your Local System (left pane) is 'C:\Program Files\WS_FTP'. You can move up to 'C:\Program Files' by double-clicking the green up-arrow.  To move up to to 'C:\', double-click the up arrow again. To change to another drive letter, scroll down and double-click on any available drive.

Some Useful FTP Tips

• Make sure there's index.html file in each and every directory. Otherwise, visitors may have access to all the files in this directory.
• Unix systems are case sensitive.
• Unix filenames also may contain almost any type of character, and sometimes this may confuse FTP clients. If you have trouble retrieving or linking to a file, try using wildcards in FTP to delete it, and replace it with a file that doesn't have spaces or other special characters in its name.
• CGI scripts must have file permissions set to "executable". Otherwise they will not run correctly.
• You should upload graphic files (such as .jpg or .gif files) in 'Binary' mode with FTP, and HTML or scripts in 'Ascii' mode.

More Web Hosting, Design, Promotion Articles and Tips

Feel free to use this article in your publication or web site.
It's pre-licensed to you.
The only requirement is to include this resource box at the end of the article:

Web Hosting Articles and Tips

Why Do You Need A Web Site In The First Place?
What To Look For In A Web Host? 2
Why Do You Need Your Very Own Domain Name?
How To Choose A Domain Name?
What Can Server Side Includes (SSI) Do For You?
Super-charge Your Web Site With CGI Scripts 2
How Much Bandwidth Do You Need?
What's In The Mysterious Log File?
How To Use FTP?

Web Design Articles and Tips

Web Site Design Basics - From Internet Marketers Standpoint 2
Top 10 Deadly Web Site Design Mistakes 2
Easy Web Site Maintenance Using Server Side Include (SSI)
Should You Do Web Site Design In-house?
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Made Easy
Avoid "Lost" Traffic By Making Full Use Of Error Pages
What The Heck Is That? - All The Jargons Explained 2 3
How To Design An Effective Navigation System?
Are You Mad About Spam?
Ten Steps To Top Ranking Pages In Google 2

Web Promotion, Internet Marketing Articles and Tips

Can You Still Make Money On The Internet?
How To Rank High In Search Engines?
How To Get Listed In Yahoo? 2
The Power Of Opt-in List
How To Reach Millions Of People With Your Product For Free?
How To Get Thousands Of People Actively Promote Your Online Business? 2
The Strategy That Will Pay You Off For Years
Does Banner Ad Still Work?
One Stone, Three Birds - Newsgroup And Forum Participation
The Magic Word
How To Drive Targeted Traffic In 10 Minutes Time?

Singapore Web Hosting, Web Design, Web Marketing