) | Jean LeLoup & Bob Ponterio SUNY Cortland © 2008 |
Moving files from one computer to another over the Internet is accomplished through FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Remember that accessing web pages is done through HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). So HTTP will show you a web page in your web browser, and FTP will let you send files back and forth between computers. In like manner SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) does email, and FPTP (French Pastry Transfer Protocol) lets you eat cream puffs that are actually located on the other side of the Earth (What? You don't have this one on your computer yet? )
We will look at three ways to upload your web page to your web server space (AKA publishing). All three methods use FTP behind the scenes to make the transfer.
We'll look at how to use WS-FTP, a very popular program, to copy your web sites from your local computer to your web server space. There are lots of FTP (File Transfer Protocol) programs available; you might want to try out a few to find the one you like best. You can get a trial version of WS-FTP Home from Ipswitch for free (They also have a Pro version). You can certainly find free software for FTP such as FTP Commander, FTP Navigator, Coffee Cup Free FTP, Cute FTP Home, FreeFTP.
Remember that a web page is made up of not only the HTML file that you have made but also any files that you have included in your page (images, sounds, etc.). To transfer a page, you have to transfer all of its associated files. By keeping each project in its own folder, we will make it easier to manage your site by moving or copying the entire folder at once.
For this example, we will use an older version of WS-FTP to connect to the account of a student with the C-number C00123456 on the server studentweb.cortland.edu to put a web page at the address http://studentweb.cortland.edu/EmailLoginName/mini2/index.html
To connect to your site using WS-FTP, you need to set up a Profile
with
the information that the program needs to find the web server space.
| The Profile Name can be anything that easily
identifies this
site for you.
The Host Name is the name (address) of the computer where the server is located. In this case studentweb.cortland.edu. The User Name or User ID is the C-number for the account. So for this student, the FTP login name is C00123456. The Password is the password that you have chosen for your account. At SUNY Cortland, the faculty web server is web.cortland.edu and the login is cortland/login-name (so mine is cortland/ponterior). |
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Once connected, use MkDir to make or create your new directory or folder for your page. Double-click on the new folder to display it in the Remote Site window. Move to the Local System folder where you have been creating your web page. Next, select all the files that you wish to move including your web page and any associated files such as images. Make sure that the Auto checkbox is checked for automatic selection of Binary or ASCII mode. ASCII is for plain text files such as HTML or TXT; Binary is for everything else, sounds, images, even wordprocessor document files. Finally, click the right facing arrow to transfer the files. Your files will be copied to your new folder and will be accessible using your URL or web address.
Newer, better, software makes it even easier to do many of these things, to set up connections for many different web sites that you might wish to edit, and even to transfer files between two remote computers instead of just between your computer and a remote computer.
My Computer or Windows ExplorerIn the Address window type the ftp address of your host machine:
ftp://studentweb.cortland.eduYou will be asked for your User Name and Password. NOTE! On the SUNY Cortland system, students need to use their C-number as their web user name. Faculty accounts require the user name in the format "cortland/YourEmailAccountUserName".
Once connected, the Internet Explorer window will resemble the Windows Explorer folder view. Now you can copy and paste your local files to the appropriate folder in your online folder window just as if it were a folder on your local hard drive. Be careful not to get confused about which version is local and which is remote, and keep track of which is your most up-to-date version. Here is a sample view of an online folder.
Many web page editing programs such as DreamWeaver and Nvu can publish your web page from right within the editor. They will need the information about the web server address where your web space is located and your account log-in information to make the FTP connection. This is exactly the same information that we described above. These programs basically have FTP software built in and can do quite a bit to help keep the online version of your web site in synch with the local version that you are editing. Never save the login information for your accounts on a public computer.
Saving a local copy
As you have learned, you will always keep your entire web site in a
folder on your hard drive, perhaps even in folders within folders. But each project should be be
entirely located within its own folder so that you can move your project around simply
by moving this folder. Be careful never to copy your folder into itself (either on your computer or on your web space) or you may end up with the equivalent of a "temporal paradox" reminiscent of the old Star Trek series!!!! 
You could save the project folder to a floppy disk, but floppies are very small, only 1.4 MB of data. They also are notoriously unreliable and slow. Yuck! 
If you are using floppies, you are probably also writing in cuneiform!
A slightly better solution is a CD-RW or rewritable CD or DVD. You can carry your entire project around with you on a CD. To safely work on your project with little chance of accidental erasure, NEVER try to work directly on the CD-RW disk but copy the project folder from the disk to the computer's hard drive, work on the project, then copy the entire folder back from the computer's hard drive to the CD-RW disk. Always take care to keep track of which copy is up-to-date. You may find that files copied from a CD become read-only. This means that you have to right-click on your folder and uncheck the read-only property for all of the files. This is a pain. You are probably better off using a CD ONLY as an emergency long-term back-up.
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Finally, the best solution at the moment is to use your USB Flash Drive while you are working on a page and keep it in synch with a version on your hard drive. Flash drives are inexpensive, fast, and look just like another hard drive or folder. They usually come with a USB extension cable to make it easier to plug them into your computer. Before unplugging your USB Flash drive, be sure to use the Safely Remove Hardware icon to stop the drive (shut it down). This prevents accidentally unplugging it while it is trying to transfer some data. |
Beginning FTP Tutorials
FTP 101 - A Beginner's Guide
FTP Tutorial from CandidInfo
Zen and the Art of FTP: An FTP Tutorial
FTP Tutorial : HelpQuest
Using Internet Explorer for FTP
Adobe Dreamweaver Tutorials
Univ of Michigan - Managing your site with Dreamweaver 8
Adobe Dreamweaver Support Center
Learn How To Build Your Web Site Using Nvu
How to Design and Publish your Website with Nvu
Saving Files and Publishing in Nvu
