ThisIsLeon.co.uk

To kick off my first post in a series i’m calling Simples, I will explain in simple terms what FTP is and how you can use it.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is a way to exchange files over a network, such as the Internet. You would use it to transfer files between your computer to your server. You use an FTP client in order to handle this exchange.

If you’re a bit confused about the whole server thing, don’t worry. Take a look at this post that will quickly explain it.

Already lost, take the following example as an analogy (FTP is far more complex, but this should help you get the basic idea).

I have a letter that I wish to send to a company. The letter needs to travel from my house, to the companies office (my computer to my server). In real terms, I would post the letter using a service such as the Royal Mail. This is the equivalent of FTP.

In order to get the letter into the Royal Mail system requires some sort of input device. In our case a Post Box. Think of this post box as our FTP client and it is the method to which we interact with our protocol (Royal Mail).

In the same way that you would use the Post Box to post your letter, you would use an FTP client to exchange files between your computer and server.

There are many FTP clients about. Personally I use Transmit on a Mac. If you use a PC, take a look at FileZilla. You can learn more about them by following their links above.
While each FTP client may have their own features, they will all share the same common principles and require the same information.

In order to exchange files, the majority of FTP clients have a window broken in to two columns. The left hand column is normally lists files stored on your computer and the right side lists files from your server. Simply dragging and dropping files from one side to the other will create the transfer.

To connect to your server via FTP you will need (at least) the following bits of information.

• FTP host/location – This is normally something like ftp.domain.com. In my case it’s ftp.blog.sizzla-media.co.uk
• FTP username
• FTP password

Simply enter these into required places in your FTP software.

Once you have logged in, you will be presented with the contents of your webserver. Depending on your hosting provider you will see a folder called one of the following:

• wwwroot
• httpdocs
• domain name (i.e blog.sizzla-media.co.uk)
• htdocs

If you don’t see one of these folders (or something named similar), chances are you are logged straight into the root of your account (i.e straight into the folder called blog.sizzla-media.co.uk or htdocs).

In my case, I will see a folder called blog.sizzla-media.co.uk. This contains all of the files that make up my website. If I typed in http://www.blog.sizzla-media.co.uk (my URL) into a web browser, it would connect to my server and display the contents of this folder).

To access and link to files that you upload, you can simply append the file name and extension to your URL. For example I have just uploaded a file called helloworld.jpg to my server. I would be able to view the file by typing http://www.blog.sizzla-media.co.uk/helloworld.jpg into a browser.

In order to keep things organised on your server it is wise to store files within folders. I tend to keep all of my images, within a folder called Images. Imagine that I now moved the helloworld.jpg file into this folder then I could now find it by typing http://www.blog.sizzla-media.co.uk/images/helloworld.jpg

That’s pretty much it for FTP. You should know how to access, browse, upload and find your files.

In future posts, I will show you how to do something with the files such as embed them in a web page.