FTP, or File Transport Protocol, is a utility used to transfer web documents back and forth from your computer to your website online. There are free FTP clients, and File Managers available all over the Web. Just do a search in the search engines (there's a search box at the bottom of this page), and you will find a large selection. I use Leech FTP, because it is easy to use, and it has many features that I like. If you want to download Leech FTP, click on the zip file link below. It's totally free. After you run setup, you will find Leech in [Start]+[Programs]+[Leech]. You can find complete instructions with pictures by clicking Help on the Leech top menubar.

LeechFTP

Jan Debis debis@rz.fh-heilbronn.de

Price: Freeware

Download: lftp13.zip

There's an FTP client that comes with most windows operating systems. This is a command line FTP. This means you will have to type out all commands and user information manually. It doesn't have a windows interface, but it's nice to know it's there, if you ever need it. I use this FTP sometimes when I am away from home using another computer. The easiest way to find the Window FTP is by clicking the [Start] button in the bottom left hand corner. Click [Run], type ftp in the box, and click [Ok]. There it is! You should see an ftp prompt.

First, type "help" (without quotes). This will give you a list of commands. To find out what each command does, type help, and then the command, and hit your keyboard enter key. For example, you see dir in the help list, and you want to know what it does. Type "help dir". You are told that this will "List contents of remote directory". The remote directory is your website directory. Take some time and get familiar with each of these commands. When you are ready to exit the FTP, type "quit". Remember this is a command line program. You can't just exit. Always type "quit".

To logon to your FTP server, type "open domain_name". To log on to williambryan.com, I type "open williambryan.com". The ftp should connect, and ask for your username and password. Enter these as you are prompted, and you should be logged on. It's important, at this point, to know the name of your default web page directory. On mine I type "cd /www" to navigate to the main default directory where my web documents are stored. On many servers, you will be in the right directory when you log on. You can type "dir" to see a listing of the files in that directory. To download a file from your web page directory type "get filename". If I wanted to download index.html file from my web page directory, I would type "get index.html". It would be downloaded to my desktop. If I wanted to change the local directory on my computer, like c:\webpages, I would type "lcd c:\webpages". Then, when I downloaded a file, it would go to my c:\webpages directory. To upload a whatever.html to my website directory from my computer, I would type "put whatever.html". This would upload whatever.html located in c:\webpages to my web page directory.

Sometimes it takes a little practice to make this work. If you need help, or have any questions, please feel free to contact me on the Help Page. I will be glad to help you with FTP.