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Uploading
your own site to the web (FTP).
FTP
Once you have built yourself a website on your own computer you will
need to transfer the files to the webserver that your domain and these
help pages are situated. The process by which files are transferred
to the web server is called FTP (File Transport Protocol). You have
unlimited access to your web space via FTP 24-hours a day. As such,
you can create and maintain your web pages on your own computer and
upload files to your domain at your leisure.
FTP
Software
You'll need an FTP client to connect to your account. Graphical clients
will normally show a local and a remote file listing, and you'll be
able to drag files to and from the server.
A
couple of recommended graphical clients for Windows - click on the software
name to visit their sites and download the application- both have good
tutorials/documentation on how to use the software so this will not
be repeated here:
FileZilla
– OpenSource, free;
SmartFTP –
free for personal, educational or non-profit use.
Many
popular web design packages also
come with FTP software functionality included.
Configuring
Your FTP Software
To connect to your site by FTP, you will need to configure your FTP
client with the following information.
| FTP
Host |
ftp.your-thisbit.co.uk |
| Username |
Your
admin e-mail address |
| Password |
Your
main account password |
The
initial working directory, port number and all other configuration options
should be left at their defaults. Refer to the application documentation
for further information on how to configure these settings
Transferring
Your Files
When you connect to the FTP server, you will placed in the home directory
for your account. You will see three system folders in your home directory
as described on the File Structure
page. You can transfer files directly to your home directory folder
(called mainwebsite_html) or create subdirectories/folders within
it to assist with the navigation of your site and ease use by laying
out the sites structure in a logical way. If this is a new account,
you'll see some default files and folders installed by i-communities
within the mainwebsite_html folder – these are the files that make
up the default home page you see and the help pages that you are now
reading. when you are ready to transfer your site to the web you will
have to delete/overwrite the exisiting index.htm file as this is the
default name for your homepage and may wish to empty the images folder
and use it to store your pictures and logo's. Please do not delete
the help folder or you will lose these help pages. As soon as a
file is uploaded to the web server, it is available for all to see.
File
Names
Our operating system is case sensitive. In other words, the file name
'page.html' is NOT the same as 'Page.html'. If your HTML code references
a 'page.html', but the actual file name is in uppercase, this will result
in a File Not Found error. This applies to directory names as well.
To prevent errors, we suggest naming all files in lowercase. You should
not use spaces and punctuation characters although the underscore character
('_') is acceptable. eg for a folder 'our_events' or for a web
'page latest_news.html'
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