P. Jacobs Web Design & Development Customer Support Pages

Accessing Your Account By FTP

We highly recommend the use of (FTP) File Transfer Protocol as the method of transferring files over the Internet to your web site. Not only is FTP the most widespread method, it's fast, effective and very reliable.

You can use an FTP program of your choice. Simply use your login and password details confirmed to you upon joining and set the remote directory to /web in the settings.

If you are new to the concept of transferring files across the Internet, please follow the simple step-by-step instructions below explained using WS-FTP for Windows 95/98/2000. Our instructions are explained using WS-FTP LE.

Click here to download WS-FTP LE

WS-FTP LE is free of charge, with no registration cost for personal, educational or government use.

Click on the WS-FTP icon located in either the start menu or your desktop upon installing it onto your computer. A window titled Session Properties should appear for your first time as shown in fig1. If not, click on the Connect button in the main window.

Fig1 - The Session Properties Dialogue Box

Give your profile a name in the Profile Name field, this name can be whatever you would like to refer as a connection to your web site. In the Host Name / Address field, type in ftp. followed by your domain name. Enter your user name in the User ID field and your password in the Password field. If you tick the Save Pwd box, you will not need to enter your password in the Password field every time you connect to make changes. We recommend ticking this box to save you the hassle, although consider the privacy of the computer you are working on if other people use it.

Click on the Startup folder tab as shown in fig2 and type in /web in the Initial Remote Site Folder field - which is where you need to be for your files to be visible on the Internet when you upload them. Make sure you are connected before you click on the ok button, as you will now connect to our server.

Fig2 - The Startup Folder Tab Under Session Properties

Fig3 - The Main Window

You will now be in the main window as shown in fig3. The grey area above the button bar will show you that you are connected and the status of files being uploaded/downloaded or any other messages from our server.

Once you are connected, you will see files on your computer in the left window and files on your website to the right. To start uploading to to your website, simply highlight files in the left window which are local on your computer, and click on the --> button in the middle to send them across to our server. You can work the other way around - highlight files on your web site and click on the <-- button to send them back to your local computer.

For the first time you will only see the default index.htm file that you will need to replace with your own (with the rest of your website). If your first page is called index.html or index.shtml you should delete our default one to save confusion or the wrong one being served as your homepage.

Once you have finished with your FTP session, click on the close button, then the exit button to close the program.

If you intend on using your own scripts (CGI/Perl/C etc) that you have acquired or written yourself, you will need to make sure the following steps are taken to ensure they will work:

Before uploading a script, you will need to change the mode from BINARY to ASCII by clicking on the ascii button in the main window of WS-FTP. When the script has been uploaded, you will need to change the file permissions of the script and/or any of it's associated files, normally provided in the instructions of the script. If there is no mention of permissions to be set, then try to set them as shown below: To open the Remote File Permissions window, simply right click on any highlighted files and select chmod (UNIX).

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