What does FTP stand for?
The basics of starting with FTP
As I mentioned previously, I wanted to get started covering how to use FTP to connect to the server. Are you thinking “What does FTP stand for anyway?” - FTP actually stands for File Transfer Protocol and it’s the type of connection you use to move files from one location to another computer or server. For our purposes it’s used to upload and download your website information to and from your computer and the webserver.
There are 3 primary things needed to make an FTP connection to a server:
- Location - What the server name is that you wish to connect to.
- Logon Informaiton - This is the “userid” and “password” that lets you connect to the account.
- FTP Client - A program you can use to connect over FTP to move the files.
Technically you don’t even need the FTP Client as you can just use commands to make a connection and work with files. Below is an example of that:
C:\>ftp web-hosting-basics.com
Connected to web-hosting-basics.com.
220 ProFTPD 1.2.10 Server (sc31.info) [209.25.195.50]
User (web-hosting-basics.com:(none)): konata
331 Password required for konata.
Password: “password”
230 User konata logged in.
As you can imagine it’s not the most user friendly way to use FTP and it’s far from “basic”. I suggest using a program which makes getting used to using FTP much easier. In the video below I used a program called Ws_ftp Pro but there are other good programs such as CoffeeCup Direct FTP that you can use for this as well. For the most part the programs are similar but you may have a preference for one or the other after using it for a while.
but there are other good programs such as
While there are some free FTP programs such as Filezilla you may find they can be a bit “lacking” at times. I’ve recently tried switching to Filezilla myself at my job but I found the interface to just be to cluttered and needlessly confusing. I’ve used a few free FTP programs before but I have still stayed with Ws_ftp Pro over the years, it’s just a rock-solid program.
Most of the rest of the information about using the program can be seen in the video I created. I need to do some more research on encoding the video to have a better quality image and prevent it from becoming too distorted when loading to YouTube. That’s my next project to tackle.
As I mentioned in the video I hope to continue doing more of these on multiple subjects as I believe they can help make the learning process so much easier. After my last 2 updates about the rather boring subject of DNS updates I was glad to work on something that kept me awake.
Thanks,
Jim
Internet Propagation
What information do the Name Servers have?
The information inside of the name servers is referred to as the “Zone File”. It contains a number of different pieces of information which are classified into different sections called records.
1) NS Record – This record is just an internal record that points back to the Name Server it resides inside of. (example: inside of the name server “ns1.site.com” is an NS Record that points back to “ns1.site.com”.
2) MX Records – This controls where an incoming email should be sent to. MX stands for the term “Mail Exchange”.
3) A Records – This is the entry that controls what IP address to point to. There are usually a few different Address Records being used at one time:
example.com A 209.25.195.50
www.example.com A 209.25.195.50
ftp.example.com A 209.25.195.50
mail.example.com A 209.25.195.36
Each of these A Records can go to a different IP address if you wish. You may have the A Record of (mail.example.com) point to the IP address of your email server and then you can set your MX Record to be: (mail.example.com). This lets email come in to the correct server for your domain.
4) CNAME Records – This stands for Canonical Name which is just too hard to say so people just call it CNAME. This is an entry that just points to another name, not an IP address. As an example you may point your domain name (example.com) to the IP address but then setup a CNAME for (www.example.com) to point to the name (example.com):
www.example.com CNAME example.com
When someone looks for the name of (www.example.com), the CNAME say to go to (example.com). Since the entry for (example.com) is an A Record that points to the IP Address, the persons web browser goes to the correct website in the end.
Internet Propagation
What exactly is “propagation”? Why is it important? Basically the term propagation is used to talk about the amount of time it takes for the entire Internet to learn of a change with the name servers. There are a few types of changes where this can become important.
The most common type of change is to change the Name Servers your domain name is using. This is usually done when you already have registered a domain name with a company such as www.GoDaddy.com but you decide to get web hosting at another company such as 1&1 Web Hosting. The advantage to this is their name servers usually are already pointing everything correctly for your account with them. You don’t need to make any further changes to get it to work from that point on.
Another type of change you make is to keep your current Name Servers and just change one of the records inside them to point to a new location. This could be a new IP address for an “A record” or a new mail server for an “MX record”.
The time period for this change to take effect on the Internet can range from just a few minutes up till 72 hours. This depends on the speed of update getting put into the Name Servers as well as how long the rest of the Internet uses the old information before looking up new records.
Once a lookup for a domain names website or email server is done that information is kept and reused for a period of time before a new lookup is done. For example; someone using their cable modem in Australia sends you an email. The company that provides the internet connection in Australia for that user will look up your domain name and find the MX record so they can send that email to your domain.
Once that MX record lookup happens the company in Australia will keep using that same information for a period of time, maybe 12 – 24 hours, and not look it up each time someone sends an email. If you changed your Name Servers right after they did a lookup on your domain they will not learn of the new information till they do a new lookup in 12 – 24 hours. They will keep sending information to the first MX record they found.
Why is this important to you and your site? If you plan on making changes to your Name Servers on your domain keep in mind that the entire Internet will not learn about the change at the same time and it can take 24 – 72 hours for this “propagation” period to complete.
I hope I didn’t get into too much detail, I tend to get carried away at times. It’s not really important to understand everything I covered in the article but the main important facts are the Name Servers are what control all the pointing of traffic for your website. If you wish to make a change to point to a new location for website or email, expect a 24 - 72 hour delay to get completed.
Thanks,
Jim
How does the Internet work?
DNS - How sites are found on the Internet
Every day there are billions of emails and website requests making its way across the Internet, it’s almost surprising things work as well as they do. What I’m going to talk about today is the basic process of how these connections are made and allow the Internet work. It’s all thanks to “DNS”.
DNS stands for Domain Name System, it’s basically the “phone book” of the Internet. It helps turn a domain name that‘s easy for a human to remember into the IP address which computers love using.
“Please understand that my explanation of DNS will be a very simple overview because this can be a very in-depth and detailed topic. I don’t feel like boring you (or myself) with a detailed explanation of the subject. If you are interested in the very fine points of DNS I strongly suggest checking out the book DNS and BIND if you wish to “geek it up”.
if you wish to “geek it up”.Simple illustration of how the Internet works:
The process starts by first connecting to the Internet through your ISP (Internet Service Provider) and opening your web browser. When you enter a website address, such as http://web-hosting-basics.com, you are asking your ISP to first find that location on the Internet and then send you that web server to see the site.
If your ISP does not have information showing what IP address to connect you to, they first need to find out what Name Servers are assigned to that websites domain name. This information is controlled by the company you registered your domain name through. This websites domain was registered through [GoDaddy Link] and I changed my name servers to those of my web hosting company.
This information is able to be seen in what’s called the “Whois” record which is basically like a public record of the domain name:
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: DNS1.SUPREMEDNS.COM
Name Server: DNS2.SUPREMEDNS.COM
Since your ISP didn’t know the where on the Internet to send you they found the name servers and request that information from them.
The Name Servers pull that information up and then reply back to the ISP with the answer. Now that the IP address has been learned, your ISP sends you to the site you want to see.
I’m going to stop at this point and in my next update I’m going to cover the information inside of these Name Servers as well as the most frustrating part of working with Name Servers and making changes to them = Propagation. What it is and how to deal with it.
If you are interested in learning more about this as well as other areas of how the Internet works yet you want something written for regular people (aka - non geeks) then you should check out How the Internet Works by Preston Gralla.
This is a great book that is filled with clear and easy to understand explanations as well as great graphics that help to better explain the subject matter being discussed.
Thanks,
Jim.
How to pick a web site hosting company.
Internet Web Site Hosting Services:
You may be wondering how exactly do people from anywhere in the word see the web site that you create on your computer. Don’t worry, this doesn’t involve leaving your computer running 24 hours a day to let them in to see your files. Thankfully you only need to get a Internet web site hosting service to put the files on for everybody to get access to.
The hosting service provider has servers that are designed to show people your web site. These companies provide the server, electricity, Internet connection, security, air conditioning, and much more. There are 3 primary types of web site hosting services:
Shared Web Hosting – Many customers sharing one server to help keep the costs down,
This is usually perfect for most people because you get a lot of hosting space and extras for your web site but you keep the costs down to just a few dollars a month.
Virtual Private Servers – Few customers sharing a server and separated into “virtual” mini-servers.
These accounts have much more power and ability to do things but they do cost a good deal more. These typically cost in the range of $70 - $100 a month to start.
Dedicated Servers – Only one customer on the entire server, they have complete control.
These servers are able to handle huge amounts of web site traffic and emails but the cost is also very high, easily starting out around $600+ a month.
I’ve only ever used Shared Web Hosting for my personally owned accounts, in fact it’s what this site is running on, and they are fine for most things anybody would want to do from a personal hobby site to small businesses.
Know what type of account you need to get
If you really just want a simple web site to display some pages with information and pictures on it then almost any web site hosting plan will work for you.
Do you want to “blog” or have a “forum”? I am using a blog for this site to post and manage updates. A forum is a page where people will post a comment or question for other people to read and reply to. These things almost always require you to have a database, such as MySQL on your account.
If you want to sell items on your web site and have a shopping cart for people to buy things with a credit card I would suggest looking into getting an eCommerce hosting account. The web site hosting company sets up the software on your account and gets it running. You just need to add your products and information to the store.
Windows or Unix
There are two types of web servers you can get for your web site, a Windows server or a Unix server. I am a little biased and prefer Unix because of my familiarity with them but I believe there are some strong reasons why Unix is the better choice if you don’t have a real need for a Windows web server.
First off, it doesn’t matter what type of computer you are using yourself. You can use any of the Windows computers, an Apple Mac, or a Linux computer and still use any type of web hosting server.
A Windows web server is able to run a programming language called “ASP” and “ASP.NET” on your web site, if you do use these then you need to go with a Windows server.
I believe the advantages of a Unix server isn’t so much with the type of server that it is but with the much greater amount of free, quality programs you can get for your web site. It will also be easier to find information on how to do things or correct problems on a Unix server since they have been around longer and are used more then the Windows server.
Unless you need a Windows server for a specific reason I would strongly suggest going with a Unix server. Note: You will also see information about “Linux” servers. These are basically a variation of Unix, for what we are discussing you can think of them as the same thing.
My Web Site Hosting Suggestions
I would recommend that you look at getting a Unix (or Linux) server and make sure that it can run “cgi” scripts, “php”coding, and comes with a MySQL database.
Don’t worry if you don’t know all the details about these right now, you don’t really need to know who they work to be able to use them. Most website applications you may want to use, such as the blog software for this site called Wordpress, uses “php” and MySQL. It’s so user friendly you don’t need to know much more then that in order to use them.
Finally I wanted to give you a few of sites I found that all offer very good hosting packages and also have a good reputation as being a reliable and easy to use company.
- 1&1 - Web site Hosting - 1&1 has an excellent service record and great plans to choose from.
- Blue Host - Web site Hosting - Great looking plans and many extras per account.
- GoDaddy - Web site Hosting - The biggest name in domain name registrations also has hosting for you.
- Host Rocket - Web site Hosting - Loaded with great features on these plans, geeks will love it.
- iPower Web - Web site Hosting - Great reliable service and excellent plans.
You will be very happy getting hosting with any of these companies so go check them out and sign up. We will be covering getting connected using FTP to your webs server in the next few updates so make sure you are ready to follow along.
Coming up next will be an explanation of how someone on the Internet is able to find your web site or send you emails. We will be covering Domain Name Servers (DNS) and the basics of how they work for you.
Thanks,
Jim.