How To FTP

File Management and Using FTP

One needs to be relatively proficient in basic computer skills in order to create and manage a website. Finding, creating, renaming, and otherwise working with files and folders on your computer should be second nature for you. These skills will be required to easily manage your site’s files and folders.

Begin by creating a folder on your computer’s drive. You may name it your domain name. This folder will contain all your site’s files. The root of this directory will contain all the files which will be uploaded to the root of your host directory. You may choose to put all your files on the root and not have any subdirectories. There is nothing wrong with this unless you believe your site may grow to a hundred pages or more. Remember, simple site design is important when beginning. For larger sites you may find it more logical and organized to create subdirectories for major topics or different products. But in almost no circumstance will you require, nor should you use, subdirectories within those subdirectories. Google may not index files in second level subdirectories and lower until the site gains higher Page Rank.

You may begin uploading your files at any time. There is no need to completely finish the site before uploading it. In fact, I upload pages as I create them and then check them on the web as I go. As long as your site is not linked to from anywhere, and you don’t submit your site to search engines, most likely no one will see your site. Be sure to look at your new site on other computers. You may be surprised at how other computers will display your site.

Your file structure on your web server will be an identical copy of your local file structure. As you create new files or make changes to current ones, you will upload those to your hosting server. As you make changes to files on your computer and upload them, they will over-write and replace the ones on the host.

Simple File Management Tips:

• Use lower case in all your files names. Do not use these forms: pic.JPG, PIC.jpg or Pic.jpg. You should use pic.jpg. Some web servers are case sensitive. You will save yourself future grief if you get into the habit of using lower cases for naming your files.
• Never have spaces in your file names.
• Always keep your file names as short as possible.
• You may use one or two dashes in your file names: large-dog-collar.jpg Never use more than two dashes. Many spam sites use many dashes in their file names.
• You may keep all your files on the root of your host directory. You can have an image folder for your pictures. But I suggest keeping all your .htm files on the root. Some search engines will be slow to visit files located in subfolders.

Some uploading advice: As you make a change, upload the file and look at it in your browser. As you make new pages and link to them, upload them and test them. It is best to upload and test the files of your site as you create them. Sometimes problems do not show up until they are actually published to the server. It is possible to be very faked out by seeing how great the page looks when it is still local. Your pages could look fine on your local computer but won’t look fine when actually on the Internet. You need to find these problems as you go and not let them pile up.

The Actual FTP Process

(How to move your web page files from your computer to the Internet)

FTP is how you get your web page files from your computer to your host’s server. In order to do this you will normally use a third party program installed on your computer. Although it is possible to FTP with Internet Explorer and within some web editors like Dreamweaver, I highly suggest you use a separate program. There are many available; some are free and others cost in the $30 to $50 dollar range. For this tutorial I will use a free client called CoffeeCup FTP.

Download CoffeCup FTP HERE and install it on your computer. It will start up after the download and a box will pop up asking for your email address. You may put yours in or just click past it.

Now that you have CoffeCup FTP running, here are the setup steps:

1. The “My Sites” window comes up and is empty. Click on the green Add Button.
2. Put a name in for the profile. Any name is fine. Just name it something like your domain.
3. Click next and put your user name and password in which your host sent to you in an email. You may click “save password”. Do not click “anonymous”.
4. Click next and put in the FTP address. It is in the email the host sent you. Usually it is either in the form of ftp.yoursite.com or simply www.yoursite.com. You do not need to provide a “default folder” at this time.
5. Click next. Normally you do not have a proxy. If you don’t know if you do or not, just click next, finished, and connect.

If any an error message occurs when it tries to connect, go back and check all of your setup steps. In order to get back to the settings, click on the “Servers” button.

After a successful connection, the right-hand window, called “my site” will populate with the folders and files already put into your hosting folder by your host. Every host will have different files and folders.

For your files to be seen on the Internet they will have to be inside a specific folder. Read the email you received from your host. Most of the time the folder you need to put your files into is called www, public, or public_html. Once you determine which folder your files should go into, double click on it to open it. It probably already has some files and folders placed there by the host.

NOTE: Free FTP clients usually do not have a “stay connect” feature. Free clients will time out when not used for a minute or two and you will have to reconnect often.

Once you have the correct folder open on the host’s server (the right window called “my site”) move to the left window called “my computer”. Browse your hard drive and open the folder (you are now in the left window) where your web site files are saved.

Highlight the files you wish to upload. If you want to upload only one file, just left mouse on top of, hold down the left mouse button and simply drag it across to the right window and drop it into your host server’s directory. To upload more than one file, hold down the control key while clicking and highlighting multiple files and then drag and drop them over to the server.

Remember, your index file is always your home page. When someone browses to www.yoursite.com, your host server knows to give that person the index page located in your site’s folder. The index file is your home page. The host may already have an index page in the folder. It probably is used as a “parked” home page. It may be index.htm or index.html. If your home page is named index.htm, it will over-write the host’s index.htm file when you upload your own. If your file is named index.htm and the host’s is named index.html, your file will not over-write that one. You should delete the other index file. You just want ONE INDEX FILE in your host folder!

If you need to delete or rename files in your host folder, right mouse button on the file and click delete or rename.

My Favorite Web Publishing Resources

I use GoDaddy for all of my domain name purchases.

I also use GoDaddy for much of my hosting. Their deluxe plan allows you to host an unlimited number of domains for just $6.95.

CoffeCup Free FTP is a fine FTP program to start with. After a while you will probably want to purchase a more full featured FTP client like CuteFTP.

For those serious about a full featured ecommerce site, I suggest Yahoo’s Merchant Solutions We use Yahoo’s ecommerce hosting for our main retail site, Cactus Canyon and are very pleased with it.

I wish you the best of luck with your online ventures!

Steve Weber

Weber Internet Marketing

http://www.WeberInternetMarketing.com