FTP

FTP, in brief

First, if you don't already have an FTP client you need to download one from the Internet and install it on your computer. Most FTP clients are pretty much the same and there are several free or very inexpensive clients on the Internet. I recommend WS-FTP LE. It is shareware for educational users, government employees or to non-business home users.

Once you have the program installed and have launched it, you should see a dialog box with several fields that need to be filled out. The first field you should populate is the Profile Name Box. You may enter anything that will help you associate it with this website. The next box that has to be filled in is the Host Name. This is the Internet address of the Web server that your Website is located on. For example if you are publishing a page to www.steelcitysports.org just change www. to ftp. therefore the host name is ftp.steelcitysports.org. The next field is the Host Type. You should leave this field selected as Automatic Detect. The third and fourth fields are your UserID and password.
IMPORTANT: if you are using a shared computer such as one at work, campus, or library make sure the Save Password option is NOT checked. Otherwise the next person using the computer will be able to login to your Website.

At this point you must make sure that the Anonymous Login checkbox is NOT selected. Otherwise the system will not allow you to login. Finally you must set the Remote Site Folder option under the Startup tab section of the dialog box. For example if your organization was called scfoobar then this portion would be filled with /public_html/scfoobar. Finally click the APPLY button to save these settings. Click on the OK button and the program should connect you to your Website as long as you filled in the information correctly.

Assuming you connected correctly you should now be looking at the FTP file management window. Notice that the window has two different sections. The left side of the window displays information about the computer you are currently using, and the right side of the window displays information about the server that contains your Website. In each case there is a top window and a bottom window. The top window works in a similar fashion to Microsoft's Windows Explorer. It displays the current drive and directory in the drop down bar and lists any subdirectories. You can double click on any of the directory names to view the contents of that directory or click on the .. to back up a directory. For Example if you are initially in the C:\Program Files\WS-FTP directory and you want to be in the C:\Temp directory simply double-click the .. twice and then double-click the Temp directory. The bottom, windows then displays any files that are located inside the selected directory. The right side of the screen works the exact same way, displaying the content of you folders on the Web server.

I'm sure that you can already see some of the benefits of using the FTP client. You can now visually browse the contents of your Web page which makes managing you files much easier. If there is a file you no longer need you simply click it once and then press the delete key. This is something that was previously impossible when limited to Composer. Additionally you can rename files or directories.
Remember that the web server is case sensitive. This means that lowercase 'a' is different then uppercase 'A', so a file named faq.html is a different file then fAq.html.
The main feature of the program however is to transfer files and this is really quite simple once you understand what you're actually looking at on your screen. If you want to transfer a file from your A:\ drive on your local computer to your Web page simply select the A:\ on the left hand side of your screen. Select the file that you wish to transfer and press the --> button that is located between the left and right side of the screen. You can transfer files from your Web page back to your computer by pressing the <-- button. Once you get the hang of this, you will be a proficient FTP user, capable of managing your Website effectively.