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
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