Filezilla can really be a monster!
Posted by Lindsayanng on February 8th, 2009
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So I have gotten a lot of questions regarding FileZilla and how to get your website or files from your computer to the internet.
“I found your email through the wordpress.org forum for themes…do you happen to know anything about filezilla? I cant get it to work at all…it keeps saying connection established but then it cant connect to server. I have Filezilla and again know nothing about it ether. How do i get them from my desk top to the site. Please VERY VERY simple way is what i need. This is about to drive me to the nut house. I really want to learn this but i am at a dead end here.
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want your question answered by me? CONTACT ME HERE!
My first suggestion is ALWAYS, if you have a Mac get fetch or a PC get Cute FTP. Those two are not free, about $25+, but so much easier to use.
If you are dead set on not spending money, I don’t blame you, if it’s free USE IT. So here is your little tutorial on how to set up your FileZilla to work nicely with your website.
First I would like to explain to you what FTP is and why you need it.
Definition:
FTP:
FTP is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol It is a method of transferring both ASCII and Binary files between networked computers or hosted servers. When you use FTP for building a website, you are always going to be using your computer to connect to the host’s server. When you set up an account with a host you are basically buying space on a computer that runs 24/7 to put your website on so that other people can access it. Technically you can host a website from your own home computer if you wanted to, but that is not something people do for any public type of website, and its a whole other story.
So now that you have a BASIC understand of what FTP is, let me tell you exactly what you need an FTP program.
You need an FTP program because otherwise, you will not be able to upload your website to your host’s server easily. You can sometimes use your host’s file manager that is built into your control panel to upload and move files, but when you need to move a large chunk of files, FTP is always much easier and faster.
If you use a web building program like dreamweaver, frontpage, iWeb or any other WYSIWYG web design program, you will need to upload your files using FTP because you will be able to build your entire site on your home computer, but then you need to somehow get it on the web for everyone to see. FTP’ing your files to your host is the way you achieve this.
So now that you have the necessities, we will dive into FileZilla, the most popular and free FTP program out there.
Star with downloading FileZilla from this website:
http://filezilla-project.org/
Then download the proper FileZilla CLIENT program for your computer. *note: if you have a mac computer, you HAVE to have OSX 5.0 or higher. It will not work without it.*
When the program is downloaded, you have to unzip the file, and that will give you the FileZilla program. Then open the program and you will see this:
The left side is all of the folders and files that exist on your computer, and the right side is all of the files that exist on your host’s server. The right side will be blank until you give the program the information it needs to connect to your server and see the files.
Before we connect to the server, you want to first see the files for your website on your desktop. With a mac, FileZilla seems to default to open in the Utilities folder. This is weird, since you will never have documents and images in your utilities fold. With a PC, I am not sure where it defaults, but either way, it probably will not be where you want it to be.
So, of the left side, you see two partitions, top left and bottom left. The top left is the main folders and the bottom left is the content of the folder you have chosen. For me, having a mac, I have to choose USERS, then my computer’s user name, and the when I expand that I will see all of the folders that I am used to working with. When I click on DOCUMENTS, you can see the contents of that folder in the bottom left quadrant.
Ok, so now we can see the content that we want to put on the server, but we still have not connected to the server, so this is where you have probably had issues.
To connect to the server:
Click at the icon at the top left that says SITE MANAGER. This will pop up the window where you put in your information.
Click NEW SITE and enter a nickname for your site
Choose FTP type NORMAL
Then you need to enter your HOST. Your HOST is not the name of the company that you use to host your website, nor is it your internet service provider. Your HOST is your website!!! Your domain name/website is where you want to put all of your files right? So it makes sense that your domain is your host. This is also where the HOST name can vary. It all depends on your host, and whether or not you have a static IP. Sometimes filezilla will require that you input your domain’s IP address, other times it requires your domain name. If you enter a domain name, make sure to put the “http://” before the domain name. If you do not know your IP address, you can log into your host’s control panel to find it, OR you can call your host.
You can leave the PORT empty unless your host requires it, which is unlikely if you have a good host.
Then you have to enter your username and password. This also can vary based on your host. If you have a good host, what would usually be done is when you create an account at your host, they automatically make the SAME username and password for your FTP login. If not, you will have to log in to your control panel and make one. If you are unsure if this was done, just try using the username and password to log in to your account and see if it works. If not, and you are confused, you are best off asking your host by calling their customer service. Ok you can send me an email and I might be able to help. Just be aware that host’s all have very different control panels.
You can leave the ACCOUNT and COMMENTS field empty. You will not need these.
Once you have entered your username and password, click CONNECT and the site manager window will close. You will see that the top box that stretches all the way across the top of the window will start showing you the log of what is happening while FileZilla starts connecting to your host.
If the connection was successful, you will see this in your log:
and your files that exist on your server will also now show in the right quadrants.
Otherwise, you will see some connection errors in red, or something that tells you that your uysername or password is incorrect.
So now lets say that you want to put your ENTIRE website that you created in Dreamweaver, iWeb, Frontpage, or other web designer program. What you would do is look at your Server’s files/folders. You will see a LOT of folders that do not mean a lot to you. The ONLY one that concerns you when you are working with adding content to your website is the public_html folder. public_html is where all of the files that are available on the internet go. This would also include files that you might have that are for administration only. For instance, if you have a shopping cart or wordpress website that has an admin side that only you want to see, it would still go in the public_html folder, that does not mean that just anyone can access it because these scripts usually automatically create a password to access the content of those folders.
Now, to upload your entire website, you will go back over to the LOCAL side (on the left) and click open the folder that contains your entire website and select all of the content by clicking on the first file, hold shift and then click on the bottom file to select all of it. You do NOT want to upload the folder, because then you will have to type in yourdomain.com/foldername to see your website, instead of just yourdomain.com.
Once you have all of the files and folders selected, just right click (or ctrl click if a mac) and choose UPLOAD from the menu. When you click upload, you will see the top and bottom boxes give you all of the information about what is being uploaded. You really do not need to read all of that unless something fails.
You will then see the all of the content that you uploaded on your server side (right quadrant) of filezilla and you should be able to go to your internet browser and type in your domain and see the website that you created, live and on the web!!!
If you just want to upload a file to a website that is already created, the process is similar. However, this time you will open the public_html folder and you will see all of the files and folders that you already have on your website. You would then use the server side (right quadrant) to browse to the folder which you would like to upload the file to, and select that file. Then you would browse to the LOCAL folder on the right side, then just select the singular file and right click (or ctrl click on a mac) and choose UPLOAD from that menu. When it is finished, you will see the file now showing on the server side. Its a wonderful thing, because now you are DONE. FileZilla also does a DRAG AND DROP where you can select a file or files from your local side and drop them in a folder on the remote site and it will upload the same.
Now, what if there are files on your website that you want to download to your computer. This is easy as well. You just use the server side (the right quadrant) to browse to the file that you want to download, then right click (or ctrl click) and choose DOWNLOAD. You can also delete the file entirely from your website if you wish.
Sometimes you will also hear that you have to change “permissions” on your file or folder. You can do this through FileZilla as well! When you right click (or ctrl click) on a file/folder on your remote side (the right quadrant) you will see file permissions as an option. When you click that, a new window will open where you can change the file permissions of that folder. If you want to learn more about what file permissions are, click here and read this post.
Also, sometimes when you want to upload a bunch of files, you want to create a new folder to put them in so that everything stays organized. This is also simple. You select the folder that you want the few folder to be in (you can choose public_html or any folder in side of public_html) and then right click (or ctrl click) and choose CREATE DIRECTORY. In the world of web design, you will find that the word FOLDER and DIRECTORY will be interchanged a lot. Directory means folder, and folder means directory.
So that is it. This your FileZilla for Idiots tutorial.. Now, since hosts are ALL different, you might have to play with the login a little. If you have to do something a little different to log in, PLEASE post a comment here with the name of your host, and how you did it!! If you can NOT figure it out, and your host is of NO help what so ever, feel free to email me, and I will help walk you through it.
I also suggest that you PRINT THIS PAGE and follow it as you go. CLICK HERE:
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P.S. If you do have one of those hosts that will not help you, or only offers e-mail support when you need support NOW, you should consider changing hosts. I always 100% stand by HOSTMONSTER as the best host out there with TOP NOTCH customer support. When i first started, I didn’t have someone around to explain these things to me, LUCKILY I had went with hostmonster and they actually stayed on the phone with me for about an hour helping me to connect to my ftp, teaching me about how to use my control panel, AND helping me with learning a little more about Dreamweaver (which is WAY above and beyond). Because, when I started, I had NO CLUE how to get a website from my computer, to the internet.
To read about how easy it is to switch hosts, CLICK HERE and read about my experience with changing hosts.
Want to know who is offering this awesome content? Here it is! Someone who is relatively new to web design. I am new enough to still remember how absolutely frustrating it was to try and get anything done in this field, but have also been around long enough to be able to help those that are where I was a year ago.
Aside from web design, I run the office of my dad's engineering business, and do book keeping by trade.
I love my pets.. All 6 cats, 1 peg legged dogs, and 1 hedgehog. LOVE THEM!!
Oh yea, and my husband. He lets me chase my dreams and I let him do the same. We are happy people because of it. Read more from this authorTags: file transfer protocol, filezilla, filezilla for wordpress, filezilla websites, FTP, how to use FileZilla, setting up fileszilla, using filezilla, Web Design, what is FTP
