FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. This protocol provides a standard way to transfer files between computers, regardless of the operating system on each computer (Windows, DOS, MacOS, UNIX, etc.). It is the most common protocol used for exchanging files between computers on the Internet.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a method or transferring files over the Internet.  This will allow you to move files from your computer to our server.  The process is very simple, in fact with just a little practice you will sending and receiving files in your sleep.

Step 2
Start the program, you will see a connection box.  Enter the following in the fields:
Profile Name: Anything You Want To Name It
Host Name: www.your_domain.com (Or IP Address)
User Name: Your user name
Password: The password the you were given when you signed up.

Step 3
At this time you should be logged into the server and should see an (almost) empty folder on the right and you local hard drive on the left.  This is the your home folder on the server.  Double click the file you want to transfer and it will be uploaded to the server.

Important things to remember:

Text files contain only unformatted text. These are also called text-only, plain text, and ASCII files. Examples of the text type are files created in Teach Text, BBEdit, Notepad or with a DOS editor. HTML files are text files.

Everything else is a binary type file: programs, graphics, word-processing documents, etc. It may seem counter-intuitive that word-processing documents are not text files, but in their native format (Claris Works, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, etc.), they contain formatting instructions that will be mangled if transferred as text type.

File Type for Uploading GIFs and JPEGs

On a PC, GIFs and JPEGs are transferred as binary.

Compressed Files -- .sea, .exe, .sit, .zip, .hqx

When you get files from a public archive, they will usually be compressed. The compression type can often be determined by the extension on the end of the file name. Some common extensions and compression types are: .sea, .exe, .sit, .zip, .hqx.

.Exe and .sea files are self-extracting. You only have to double-click on the file to expand it. .Exe files are for use with Windows; .sea files are for use with Macintosh.

Web pages are normally accessed through a website address starting with "http://", but there is another standard way of transferring data over the Internet through a protocol called the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). FTP is generally used to transfer files rather than web pages, because it is faster than HTTP. Often when you click on a link to download a file from a web page, the file is actually stored on an FTP server and so without even knowing it, you are downloading using FTP.

Downloading files

The file download dialog box has been updated slightly in IE5. As before when you click on a file, you get the choice of opening the file from its current location (i.e. not downloading it as a file to your disk) or saving it to your drive, which is the normal choice. When you click on this you get the normal file dialog to choose where you are going to save it and a file name, if you want to change the name from its original. However, when you start the actual download, you'll see there have been some changes made. As before you get the name of the file and the destination displayed as well as an estimated download speed. At the bottom though, there are two new buttons and a new tick box. The tick box allows you to set the dialog to close automatically when the download has been completed, but you may not want to set this as the new buttons can be a useful way of getting to the new file quickly. The first button, Open, only becomes active when the file is downloaded and clicking it will open the file in the default application for that file type - for example a .doc Word file would open in Microsoft Word, as long as you have Word installed. The next button, Open Folder, which also become active when the download has been completed, will open the folder where you saved the file to. If the file has been saved to the desktop, you will simply be informed of the fact, as you don't need to open a window to see the desktop contents!

FTP site access
As well as the general file dialog handling, IE5 introduces a new feature called FTP Folders. IE4 was able to access FTP sites directly, but only allowed anonymous access and complex FTP site navigation had to be done through a third party FTP client. IE5 tries to improve matters by extending the FTP site management.

If you now type an FTP site address into the address bar, or click on a link on a web page that takes you to an FTP site, rather than a file on that site, then the view will change to the FTP Folders view. FTP addresses are ones that start with "FTP://". By default, IE will log you into the server as an anonymous user, which is the one used most commonly. This will give access to any folders that are made available to the public.

Instead of the simple text file listing that IE4 supplied, you will instead be given a normal file view, as if you were looking at a drive or folder on your own PC. You can change the view type as normal, so you can see the icons large or small, or even have the Details view with the file size and file type displayed. As with Windows, you can also click on the column heading to sort the files into order according to the column. The icons for the files are shown in accordance with the file associations you have set under Windows - so Word files will be shown as a small Word document, if you have it installed. This is designed to make everything more recognisable and make it easy for you to see what types of files are stored on the FTP site.

Sometimes, you won't want to log into an FTP site using an anonymous login though. You may have a company site of your own or have access set up by a company for you which will allow you into folders that are not available for public access. This allows you to transfer files securely that you may not want the public to be able to download. To log in with your user name and password, access the site and then go to the File menu and select Login as... This will open a dialog box that allows you to type in a name and password, with the ability to save the password for you, to save you typing in next time. You should only use this option if you are certain that your PC is not open to abuse by other users. When you click on OK, you will be logged into the server with your information. If you need to know what identity you are logged into a server with - i.e. whether it is anonymous or a proper user name - then you will see this information displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the browser when you are logged onto an FTP site.

When you start WS-FTP a dialog box automatically opens to create a connection. Use the mouse or the tab key to move among fields.

Download with WS-FTP on a Windows PC

1. Click once on a file name in the right hand box.
2. Click on the circle next to ASCII if it is a text file, or next to Binary if it is a binary file.
3. Choose a directory on your computer (local system in the left-hand panel) to which you want to download the file.
4. Click on the left arrow button.

Upload with WS-FTP on a Windows PC