FTP Information

Using Ftp To Upload To, And Maintain Your Site

Even Though Most FTP programs work pretty much the same, we have alot of people calling with FTP problems and we just tell them to get one of these programs and their problems seem to disappear. No matter which program you choose, try to get a package that allows you to Delete, MkDir, RmDir, Rename, and even View. We recommend Cute FTP, WS-FTP and Fetch for Macs.

File Transfer Protocol has many technical aspects to it. The purpose of this page is to pass on to you the needed knowledge to upload your materials & maintain your site via FTP as easily as possible.

First, get a current copy of either "Cuteftp" Or "Fetch" for Macs from:

"shareware.com"

"nonags.com"

Unzip and install it on your local hard-drive and double-click to run it.

From the File menu select "quick connect". Fill in the following with the Information provided in the setup text we sent you:

Host Name: (yourdomain.com), or use the IP address if your domain name is not activated yet. User ID: (your user id without ".com")
Password: (the one you provided - remember the server is case SeNsItIvE)

In the corresponding client areas, and click your mouse on the "OK" button Upon connection, the small window will scroll & indicate you are connected. After a pause the right-hand of the split screen will fill with the contents of your server Webspace, with directories on the top half, and files on the bottom. The left-hand side is your local harddrive contents, similarly split top/bottom. Transfer between our server and your hard-drive is a simple as dragging and dropping from one side of the screen to the other.

If You decide to use "Cuteftp", You can store the host, userid, and the password information in the "Site Manager" for future use. Then it is just a matter of opening the program and double clicking your mouse on your site entry to connect.

Just how do I start building my site?

After successfully FTP-ing to your space on our server, most FTP programs include RmDir, MkDir, etc. These are used to start 'treeing' your site from your root directory. Please make note that the default page "Welcome To My New Domain!" is called index.html in your root directory. You will want to change this document to the document that you want people visiting your site on the web to see first. Remember when accessing yourname.com from the web the default page is index.html, or index.htm in your home directory.

The most common set-up is to Mkdir a directory called Images, HTML, etc. and place the files in the appropriate place. Or, you can set-up the file system on our server exactly as you have locally on local harddrive. Either way, make a backup and a 2nd backup on your hardrive. We backup the entire server regularly, however you are ultimately responsible for the data on your site!

The HTML page is garbled when I browse it. What's wrong?

It is important to remember to send HTML (text) in ASCII mode and all image-format files in Binary. In addition, if you are using Word or some other text-editor locally for writing HTML, be sure to save the file as text only, not a .doc file, for example. Sounds dumb, but we get calls on this all the time!! One should notice that files in DOS can only be saved with a three-letter .htm extension. After FTPing, these files must be renamed (button) to include the .html extension. All of this is basic, but results in a majority of the FTP errors!

My Browser says the HTML page "has no content"?

Most likely, during the construction process you are running a text editor (like Word) and FTPing the HTML pages at the same time, then switching to your Browser to check them. If you leave the page open in the editor (especially Word), then FTP (especially WS-FTP) doesn't have anything to read (other than a filename), and thus send, to our server. The Browser, in turn, doesn't find anything. Close the documents in the editor first and save them. Then, FTP to our server and the Browser should find it healthy.

Other Introductions and Help to Ftp are located:

www.wizard.com/wiz-help/ftpqk.html

www.wizard.com/wiz-help/ftphelp.html

ftp://papa.indstate.edu/winsock-l/ftp/