I’m going to assume you have a new website or blog ready to be published for the world to see. You’ve already chosen a webhost and your HTML editor or web designer has saved the files on your PC. How do you get them from your PC’s hard drive to your webhost server? You need an FTP client software program.
But what is FTP? FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and an FTP client will allow you to upload individual files or an entire website from your PC’s hard drive via the Internet to your webhost’s server. As you might have guessed there’s plenty of choice. And some good free programs too.
Filezilla is a popular choice and available to download from sourceforge. It’s open source software; it works well and I can recommend it. Installing it on your PC is easy. In this week’s featured video Lisa from 2createawebsite shows you how to use filezilla to upload a file to your webhost. An alternative FTP client, also free, is coreFTP. Using core FTP as an example, here is how FTP programs work.
Loading coreFTP opens the manager window. The coreFTP manager allows you to connect to your host. Essentially, an FTP session is created across the web between your PC and your webhost server. In the manager window you will need to enter the site name, URL, username and password. Your webhost will create an FTP account for you and provide all of these details. This connection allows the secure transfer of files in either direction. Once connected CoreFTP will display your PC directories and files on the left of the screen and your webhost directories and files on the right of the screen. You then click on the files and select upload or you can also drag and drop files from your PC to your webhost.
That’s really all there is to it. Both coreFTP and filezilla have other features and functions, but I rarely use them. Uploading your website files is all you need to do to publish your website on the Internet.
