How To FTP Files

So you’ve heard people say “FTP this” and “FTP that”, but you still do not know how to FTP files.

File Transfer Protocol aka FTP is a protocol that allows you to transfer files from your computer over to your web server. This protocol has been around since the 1970’s. I have been using it almost as long as I have been using the internet and definitely as long as I have been building websites(just about as long).

There are many FTP applications available that make transferring files easier than ever. FTP is actually built in to the command line access to your operating system, as well additional applications such as Windows Explorer.

The application that we will use in our example is called FileZilla. We have chosen this application because it is free and cross platform. The ideas and concepts are the same with any of these applications so do not stress it if you want to use another ftp software to ftp files.

First you will need to download FileZilla and install it onto your computer. Once you have installed it, run the application.

How To FTP Files

When FileZilla is up and running you should see several boxes, Local Site and Remote Site. Local Site is your computer, Remote Site is connected to your web server.

The top two boxes are easy access to your hierarchy, the two below that are access to the actual files themselves.

Next open the Site Manager by going to the top left of FileZilla and choose File / Site Manager…

Once the site manager is open you will need to have some information in order to log into any site that you create.

Host: FTP server address. ftp.yourdomainname.com
User: Your FTP username
Pass: Your FTP password

Just for reference:

Port: By default port 21 is used. Use this if your host specifies something different.
Server Type: Default should be FTP
Logon Type: Choose normal

How To FTP FIles

Once you have input all of your login credentials click the Connect button.

If everything goes right, the very top box should scroll down some information, your Remote Site should become populated, and you should be ready to ftp files.

You will want to browse around on the left side Local Site area to find the file that you want to ftp, in the video we use Awesome-Song.mp3.

Once you find your file, you need to find the directory on your web server that you want to upload your files to. In our case it was /music.

When you get into the directory that you want to FTP files, simply drag it from the Local Site side to the Remote Site.

Congrats, you just learned how to FTP files.

That was pretty easy huh? Now that the file is uploaded to our webserver, how can we and other people access it? Depending on the directory that you uploaded the files to, the URL will be different. In our case, we uploaded our files to the music directory, which is a sub-directory of our root, which houses our index.php(our Home page).

The URL for our file would be:

http://webdevils.com/music/Awesome-Song.mp3

NOTE: the file and directory names are case sensitive, http://webdevils.com/music/awesome-song.mp3 would not work.

So that is it, a couple clicks of a button, a drag and drop, and you are done. Now you can go teach others how to FTP files to their web server