FTP Basics

For those of you who may not be familiar with FTP, it is important to understand what FTP is, what it does, and what sorts of tools you need to use it.

General FTP Tools

There are many tools that can handle FTP in one form or another, but not all are created equal for our purposes. These can be broadly categorized as:

• Web Browsers: Although most web browsers can handle FTP, they generally only handle it in a single direction (remote files to local computer) and they cannot handle the reverse (local files to remote computer) or do not handle it well. It is not recommended that you use a web browser to handle FTP to or from your website.
• HTML/Website Editing Programs: If you use any sort of website editor that runs off of your computer (like Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, Nvu, and so on), it most likely has the ability to upload, download, and synchronize files via FTP. The focus of these sorts of programs is to create web content and the ability to FTP files to your web hosting account is just a convenience. If you plan to only work on your website in one of these sorts of programs, then the FTP features should serve you well.
• Stand-alone FTP Clients: This category includes all programs that are designed primarily to work with FTP, though they may handle other types of transfers as well. It is recommended that you download and install one of these types of programs even if you have only one of the types of items mentioned above. If you plan to do a lot of work with your website, you might want to try a number of the FTP clients listed in Chapter 13 to see which ones you like best.

Configuring your FTP Client for use with your Main FTP Account

Once you’ve chosen a program to FTP files to your web hosting account, you should attempt to set it up and test uploading and downloading a file or two to make sure it is working properly. Every cPanel account comes with at least one FTP account, though depending on your hosting plan you may be able to create others. The main FTP account cannot be deleted. To connect to your website via FTP using this main account, you will typically need to provide the following information:

• FTP Host/Address: This typically is your domain name with ftp. added to it (ftp.domain.com). You can also use your web server’s IP address if your domain name isn’t working for some reason.
• FTP Username: For the main FTP account this is the same as your cPanel username (8 characters or less).
• FTP Password: For the main FTP account this is the same as your cPanel password.

Normally, this is all the information you must enter to access your account via FTP, but some clients may ask for more:

• Port: A port is a channel of communication. FTP transfers normally use port 21, although your web host might set it to something else. Always try port 21 first before trying another port.
• Starting directory: Typically you won’t need to specify this unless you want to start in a different location. This path is a list of directories separated by slashes / (for example public_html/forum will start you in the forum directory of your web hosting account, which is inside the public_html (web files) directory). Some FTP clients require the starting directory to end with a trailing slash / and some do not. Consult your FTP client program documentation to learn more.

Note

On Linux servers, folders are called directories.

• Passive FTP: There are two primary kinds of FTP connections, active and passive FTP. Passive FTP is a method of sending and receiving FTP information that works well if you are behind a firewall. Generally, you should use passive FTP for all connections since active FTP may get filtered by your ISP or your home firewall. If you’d like more information about the difference between the two types of connections, please visit http://slacksite.com/other/ftp.html.
• Directory Synchronization: If you are using a web content editor to FTP files you may be asked to specify which directory on your local computer should match with your remote web directory. For example, you may want the contents of Documents/website/mydomain/ on your computer to be what people see on your website, so you would set the remote directory to public_html. Please see the documentation for your web content editor for more information about this feature if you want to use it.

If you enter the connection information into your FTP client and you are able to upload a test file and download it successfully then you are ready to begin working on your website. If you receive an error message, please check to see that you entered your account information correctly. You may also want to consult the account information you were sent by your web hosting company. If you have a hardware or software firewall or router in the location where you are trying to connect, you should check its settings to make sure it can send and receive through port 21. If it still doesn’t work, please contact your web host for assistance.

Note

On most cPanel web servers, the FTP server has a maximum display limit of 2,000 files per directory. This means that if you have 2,500 files stored in a single directory on the web server you will only be able to see the first 2,000. This limit is designed to help keep the FTP server from crashing or overloading the entire server. It is recommended that you never have more than 2,000 files in any directory, because even if your web host has raised the maximum file limit, working with so many files will slow down your FTP transfers to and from that directory. If you must have more than 2,000 files in a single directory, please contact your web host and see if they are willing to raise that limit.