How to FTP your site
To FTP your website means to transfer your web pages that you created from your computer to your new hosting company's server where your new web site will reside.
Once this step is accomplished your web site will be visible to the world.
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, which is just another way to transfer files to or from a location.
To begin using FTP, you need to have an ftp program that makes it easy to transfer your files back and forth. My suggestion is WS_FTP LE. It's one of the most popular FTP program and very easy to use. The best part about it is that it's FREE. You can't beat that. Get it here.
If you are using Dreamweaver, you don't even need an FTP program. It's built into the program.
If you prefer to look for a different FTP program, you can go to download.com and do a search for "FTP Client". You'll find hundreds of different FTP programs out there.
Download one and install it on your computer. Follow the instructions provided with it to complete the installation.
Now that it's installed, start the program.
The rest of these instructions are related to using WS_FTP but most any FTP program is similar. That is, you set up your connection (profile), connect to the host, select files and transfer.
When you start the WS_FTP program, the first thing that pops up is the session properties screen. You need to create a new profile that connects you to your web host. Click on the "New" button to begin creating your new profile. You can now fill in the information that was provided by your web host in order for you to access your disk space.
Again, these are the fields for WS_FTP but you still need this information no matter which program you use.
Profile Name: There are some predetermined ftp sites already set up under the Profile name. I've personally never used them. You can delete them if you like. Anyway, type in a name you can remember later. I usually use my host's name so that I know whom I am connecting to in the future.
Host Name/Address: Your web host will tell you the address you need to use to connect to. It will probably be in the form of ftp.something.com. If they didn't tell you after you signed up (doubtful) you will need to contact them.
Host Type: Just leave this on Auto Detect. This will let the program decide and configure itself accordingly. Rarely will you have to change this. If it doesn't work though, your host can tell you.
User ID: Enter your User ID given to you by the web host.
Password: Enter your password given to you by the web host to log into their services. You should have received the User ID and password in the confirmation email from the host when you signed up for their service.
Account: Leave this blank. To be honest, I don't know what it's for and I've never had to use it.
Comment: You can add your own comments and descriptions here but you don't have to enter anything.
Anonymous: You only need to check this box if you are connecting to a host that allows anonymous ftp. In this case your login needs to be validated because you are going to be writing or uploading files to your disk space for your web site. Anonymous access is used if you are going to be downloading from a public site that anyone has access to.
Save Pwd: Select this box if you want the program to save your password. If checked, you won't have to enter your password each time you connect.
Now hit the "OK" button at the bottom. If you filled out everything correctly and are connected to the Internet, you will be connected to your web host. If you are not connected to the Internet at this time, just click "OK", and the information you filled out will be saved.
Exit the program, connect to the Internet, and then come back to the FTP program. When you come back in, you will be able to select the profile that you created, click "OK" and connect to your host.
If you don't connect successfully to your host, you can click on "logWnd" at the bottom of the screen. This brings up the log window and you can see what error occurred that prevented you from logging in. You can see this on the main screen as well, but it's a little harder to read only two lines at a time.
Now that you were able to connect to your host, what the heck are you looking at! The screen will be split into two frames. Left and Right. On the left side at the top you will see "Local system". This is your hard drive on your computer. On the right side you will see "Remote site". This is your disk space at your host company.
Now you can select your web page files on your computer (left side of screen) and transfer them to your web host (right side of screen). On the left side of the screen navigate to the directory where your web pages are stored on your local computer. If you need to go up one directory, use the green arrow at the top of the file list. If you need to go to another drive letter, scroll to the bottom of the file names and you will see your different drive letters. Select the drive you need to go to and double click it.
You will now get a new list of directories and files. Keep navigating through the directories until you get to where your web pages are stored.
Web hosts are different but the most common directory on the right side of the screen where you will copy your web site to is within the "public_html" folder. When you double click on the "public_html" folder, the contents will be listed in the right side of the screen. If this is the first time, it should be pretty empty. You may see a file there called index.html. Don't worry about it; you are going to overwrite it when you transfer your stuff over.
You are now properly positioned on the right side of the screen. This is where you want to send your web pages. Now just select the file you wish to send, on the left side and click on the right arrow in the middle of the screen. Voila, the file is magically sent to the web server. The first time you do this, you should send all of the files and folders that are within your web site folder on your local drive. After that, you only need to send the pages that you change.
If you notice, almost to the bottom of the WS_FTP program's window, there are 3 options. "ASCII", "BINARY", "AUTO". Basically, these are different file formats. The most common method is to transfer anything with a .txt, .html, .htm, .cgi and .pl in ASCII mode and everything else in BINARY mode.
You can select multiple files to transfer just like you do in windows. Click on a file, hold the Ctrl key and click on any other files that you want, select the mode "ASCII" "BINARY" "AUTO" and click the right arrow. If you would like to see visually how to do these things, ipowerweb has excellent interactive tutorials on these procedures and a lot of others.
That's pretty much it, you're visible. It was the intent of this information to explain how the internet works and what happens behind the scenes so that you will be more likely to know what may be wrong if something isn't working. And also to act as a primer for the beginner person to get his or her web site up and running.
Now go on and prosper!