Transferring Your Files With FTP

Your visitors will normally view your site by by using a standard web browser. The browser typically downloads files from the Webtechs Internet web server that hosts your site. For this to work, you must first copy your newly created web files to our web server.

FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is a standard procedure for copying files between a client system, such as your PC, and a server system, such as the Webtechs Internet system that hosts your web site. The process is orchestrated by an FTP client program running on your system that communicates with an FTP server program running on the server. Uploading is copying from your system to the server; downloading is copying from the server to your system.

The steps in this tutorial will get you started with FTP so you can upload and manage the files in your web site.

Selecting an FTP Client Program Most PCs come with a very simple, command line oriented FTP client program. However, we recommend one of the many good graphical FTP clients instead. These programs typically provide a more intuitive user interface. There are many good free and shareware FTP client programs available on the Internet.

Tucows has several available for download:
  WS_FTP Pro: www.ipswitch.com
  CuteFTP: www.cuteftp.com

Configuring Your FTP Client Program After you have selected and installed an FTP client, you'll need to configure it to access your Webtechs Internet server. Each FTP client uses a similar but slightly different configuration interface. The example below assumes WS_FTP Pro 6.51, which is typical of most FTP clients.

Host Name: Enter your site's name. For example, if your domain name is yourdomain.com, enter www.yourdomain.com.

UserID: Enter the User ID provided to you in the account setup e-mail message that we sent you.

Password: Enter your site's administrator password.

Anonymous: Make sure this option is disabled. This option is normally used for publicly accessible FTP sites that generally only grant download (read) access.

You should now be able to connect to your site's FTP server. WS_FTP Pro and many other graphical FTP clients display your PC's files in a Local System window and your server's files a Remote Site window. You should see the contents of your site's home directory displayed in the remote window. If your FTP client did not connect, check the information listed above for accuracy, or consult your FTP client's documentation.

FTP Transfer Modes Before you transfer any files to your server, you should be aware that FTP supports two distinct transfer modes: ASCII and binary. ASCII mode is generally for transferring text files, such as web pages or Perl scripts. Binary mode is for transferring binary files, such as graphics, executable programs, or zip files. Most good FTP clients can determine which type of file you're transferring, and select the appropriate mode. But if your client doesn't do this, you will have to select the mode yourself. If a file is transferred with the incorrect mode, it may be garbled and fail to work properly.

Uploading Your Files To upload your files, navigate your FTP client to your site's home directory on the remote system. There you should see a directory called HTDOCS. Inside this directory you should see a file called index.html. This is the default home page that we created for you when we first activated your account. Upload your files into the HTDOCS directory.

Viewing Your Uploaded Files Once your FTP client indicates that the transfer is complete, you can use your web browser to view the results. If you uploaded a file called test.htm, for example, you can view it with your web browser by entering http://www.yourdomain.com/test.htm.
If you created a directory called aboutus in your site's home directory, and you transferred a file called index.htm to that directory, you can view it at http://www.yourdomain.com/aboutus/index.htm.