Technical ConfusionBecause Technology Is Confusing

How to FTP - Filezilla Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to ftp with Filezilla. Filezilla (get it here: http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/) is a free FTP program and it is easy to use. It will walk you thru where to put your settings.

You can rename your files, upload, download, and manage most aspects of your account via FTP.

In any ftp program, these general rules apply:

Hostname: yourdomainname.com
Userid: your userid for your control panel
Password: Your password for your control panel.

The userid and hostname is lower case as a rule, the password is case sensitive.

Always make sure anonymous ftp is unchecked.

When naming files, they should always be lowercase.

The first file, and this applies to any directories you use, must be named like so: index.html, index.htm or index.php. If the first name is not named index, it won’t show, you’ll get a directory listing.

This is the first view you will see when you open the program.

The left side is your local machine, the right will show your website. Check the Q on the file menu and you’ll get an explorer view.

First, you need to find your site manager. This is where you keep track of your sites. It’s where you put all those funky usernames and passwords.

Go to File/Site Manager.

You will select the New Site button to add your site to the site manager.

This image shows the settings you need to have (sent to you in your activation email) and where they go. Sorry the image is blurry.

You need the hostname, userid and password. In case you need the port, it’s 21.

Click Connect to connect to your website.

Once you connect, this is the first window you’ll see. Don’t upload here. You can, you won’t hurt anything, but nothing will be viewable from a browser. These are “system files.” You need to double click the public_html folder and go in there.

All servers are different, and your folder may be different. Look for folders like www or httpdoc or similar. Worst comes to worse, go in and look in each folder.

Navigating around your website via ftp is just like navigating on your own computer. Don’t worry about breaking anything: there’s nothing you can do to break it. (Well there is, but nothing that can’t be fixed!)

This is what it looks like once you’ve gone into the public_html folder. It’s also known as your root directory, and this is where you put all your files that you want viewed on the internet. Right now it’s empty. It won’t be for long.

If you want to delete a file, right click and delete. You can change permissions (chmod) here as well by right clicking and selecting File Attributes. In some ftp programs its Properties, in some it may be CHMOD.

If you see a cgi-bin folder, you’re in the right place.

This image shows you how to upload. Very easy.
Right click the file to upload, and choose Upload.

You should now be able to view your page on the internet.