Building Your Web Site – FTP Software
To have a web site that you’ll call your own you also need to have FTP access from your computer over the network / Internet to the server where your web site is hosted.
Part of our series on establishing online presence…
Transferring (and manipulating) files from one computer to another over the network is done with FTP software.
FTP is short for File Transfer Protocol
There are numerous FTP clients (software) on the market that will enable you to do more or less the same tasks you may need when for an example transferring files from your home / office computer to the server where your web site resides.
You can also use some of the Web browsers to transfer files to FTP server.
Type in to the Web browser address bar :
ftp(s)://<login>:<password>@<ftpserveraddress>
If you are planing to go online with your business or personal web site, and you are preparing images, layout, scripts, etc. on your local computer, then to transfer that data over the Internet your FTP client will use two transfer modes; Binary mode and ASCII mode. FTP software may have ‘Auto’ option that will automatically switch from one mode to another depending on type of file you are uploading / downloading.
Transferring files in the wrong mode will corrupt data.
Some types of files that are transferred in ASCII mode:
- ASCII mode – plain text: .txt, .php, .css, .sql, .tpl, .html, .shtml, .xhtml, .pl, .cgi, .asp, …
Some types of files that are transferred in Binary mode:
- Binary mode – images: .jpg, .gif, .ani-gif, .swf, …
As already mentioned, there are many FTP clients that you can choose from. One of the FTP clients that will let you start uploading, installing and setting up your web site within few minutes and it’s FREE is “FileZilla”.
FileZilla, “The free FTP solution”…
On next few screenshots we’ll show you how to add New Web Site to the “Site Manager” on FileZilla:
1. Enter basic FTP information provided to you by your server administrator or hosting company:
2. Set up Advanced Settings – Find your web site folder on your computer:
Next time when you want to upload data on server where your web site is hosted, open FileZilla and just click on the arrow pointing down, just beside button “Open the Site manager”, choose “myWebSite” on the list (or whatever name you gave it when you were setting it up by following above instructions), click on it and within seconds you’ll have access to the server. On the left side is data on you local computer and on the right side data already on the server.
With this basic information you should be able to upload or download files from host server – your web site. Just select files or folders on your local computer and drag them (or Right click – Upload) to the server.
Partial list of few more File Transfer clients (FTP):