Lesson 01: File Transfer Protocol

In this unit you will learn how the FTP process works, how to access your FTP account and a variety of FTP applications.
This unit should take you approximately 1 hours

Introduction | Accessing Your FTP | Viewing Your Web Page | Activity | FTP Applications | Compression/Archiving

Introduction

"FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. A protocol is a language that enables computers to speak to one another. FTP is used to make files and folders publicly available for transfer over the Internet. In some cases you may need to get permission from the network computer's administrator to log on and gain access to files on the computer. But often you'll find that you can use FTP to gain access to certain networks or servers without having an account, or being an official password holder, with that computer. These "anonymous" FTP servers can contain a broad range of data that is publicly available through FTP.

The Internet address (URL) for an FTP server looks slightly different from the URL you use for a typical Web page. For example, Microsoft has an "anonymous" FTP server at ftp://ftp.microsoft.com, where you can download files ranging from product fixes, updated drivers, and utilities, to Microsoft Knowledge Base articles and other documentation.

How much access you have to files and folders on FTP servers depends on whether you gain access to the servers through a CERN proxy server or directly, and what kind of permissions you have with the FTP server.

• Access through a CERN proxy server is limited to viewing or downloading files. You cannot rename, upload, or delete files or folders through a CERN proxy server as you can through other types of proxy servers.
• If you gain access to FTP sites directly, you can work with files and folders on the FTP servers much like you work with them on your own computer. You can view, download, upload, rename, and delete files and folders. If you need permission from the FTP server to perform any of these actions, you will be prompted to provide your username and password."

>>>>From Microsoft Internet Explorer Help Menu<<<<

Accessing Your FTP

You will be accessing our web server throughout this course.  This section will outline the process for accessing the FTP server.  Those of you that are accessing the server from home, may choose to use an FTP application. 

Your folder on the company server is only for the storage of files related to this training course (html files, images and multimedia).  Your folder's total size should not exceed 10 mb.  Make sure that you keep a backup of all work on the server in case it is lost.

Your FTP username is your last name (it has to be nine characters long so I will talk with you about this. My username would be dockeryj1. Your password is your 5 digit student id number. We run our Internet access through a proxy server at school so you must be in lab 121 to FTP.

Filezilla: I prefer to use Filezilla now. We have installed it on all the computers and you can download it for free at home. I suggest that you setup a quick launch so that you don't have to type in the host and your username each time.

Tutorial Filezilla
Host Name: 02bd4e5.netsolhost.com

Filezilla

Launch Internet Explorer and then go to: ftp://www.schooladz.com. When you are using Internet Explorer 7 you will get the following message:
" To view this FTP site in Windows Explorer, click Page, and then click Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer." You maybe prompted to logon before or after this message. If you are using IE6 at home you will have to go into the Tools menu, and select Internet Options. Then click on the "Advanced" tab and make sure that "enable folder view for FTP sites" is checked. 

Your FTP folder will come with a default index page. You can simply delete it and upload your own.

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Uploading:

You should be able to simply drag and drop files and folders from your desktop to your new folders.  Since your "local" folder is a mirror of your company folder it can act like a backup version of your work.

Downloading:

Open your folder on the company server.  Then "right click" on the file or folder that you want to download.  Select "Copy to folder" and navigate to the folder you wish to download the file into. 

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Viewing Your Web Pages:

When you have your FTP folder open it will be tempting to double click one of the pages to view it. Don't! This opens the page in FTP instead of http and will not refresh properly. Instead, you should open a browser window and type in the path to the file: http://schooladz.com/~lastname/filename.html or at home http://www.schooladz.com/~lastname/filename.html. Of course if you are testing the default file "index.html" you don't have to type in the file name. (For those of you that are asleep, replace "lastname" with your last name and "filename" with the real file name.)

Tutorial>> Please watch this FTP tutorial.

Do you have your own web server?

Most Internet Service Providers give their customers 5-10 mb of web server space to post web pages.  Go to your ISP's web site to check out if and how you can take advantage of this opportunity.

FTP Tips & Tricks: 

Keep your local folder and your folder on the company server identical.  This way you can test your coding and if you make a bunch of changes to your files you can FTP up a whole folder. 

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Working from Home

If you want to work on a web page from home, do not open the web page and save it from your web browser!  This will capitalize your HTML and add a bunch of code from the browser.

>> There are two ways to get the code from your web pages on the web server that will not change your code.

1. Open the web page and "view the source".  Then do a "save as" from Notepad or Simple Text.
2. Open the FTP folder with an FTP application or Internet Explorer 5.5.  Download the file to your local machine.  If you are using Internet Explorer, you will right click the file and select "Copy to folder".  Then make sure that the path is to the appropriate folder.

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Activity

Download the test.html file from the SharePoint. Then upload the test.html file to your FTP folder. Open it in a browser and then email the URL to your instructor. Make sure the URL starts with http. Watch the Tutorial>> FTP tutorial again if you need help.

FTP Applications

There are a number of applications specifically made to handle your FTP needs.  Why use something else if you can just use Internet Explorer?  Many of these applications are either free or inexpensive and they have many of the bells and whistles that some people are looking for.  Please review some of the features of the applications at ZDNet to get a better idea of what they offer.

Filezilla

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File Compression and Archival

WinZip is one of the most popular downloads on the Internet today.  You will want to review the "What is a Zip File, Anyhow? and the Frequently Asked Questions" pages on their web site.  Then you can either purchase your own copy of this popular software or download the free trial version for this exercise.

PC WinZip - popular file archive and compression software for the PC. PowerArchiver - PowerArchiver is the ultimate archive utility for Windows® 95, Windows® 98, Windows® ME, Windows NT®, Windows® 2000 and Windows® XP.

MAC ZipIt - This is a Macintosh program that zips and unzips archives in a format fully compatible with PKZip for the IBM and zip implementations on other systems.

Tips & Tricks:  An easy way to do this in simply right click on the folder and select "Add to Zip".  Then select a directory to put the zip file and name it according to the direction above.

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