Uploading Content to your Virtual Host

One of the most basic tasks you will need to perform as a Virtual Host Administrator is uploading files to your website. In most cases you will upload your content using File Transfer Protocol or FTP. You can alternatively upload content using iManager, Windows 95/NT File Sharing, or by using a web content publisher.

Many web content authoring programs include built-in web publishing capability. In some cases this involves installing proprietary extensions on the Virtual Host (a la Microsoft FrontPage), other packages use the HTTP "PUT" method, but more commonly publishers will provide support for simple FTP. It is not necessary, however, to rely on your web content authoring program to publish to your site. You can compose your web content using any program and then FTP the content to your Virtual Host manually.

This page discusses the general information you will need to know to FTP content to your Virtual Host. More detailed steps are given to use several specific FTP clients. And, uploading content via other methods is also presented. The sections on the page are show below:

General Instructions for using an FTP Client
Using an FTP client to upload content to your Virtual Host is a very simple process. The following guidelines provide a general overview of uploading files to your Virtual Host.

1. You will need an ftp client for your local machine. You can find many free and useful clients on the Internet. Search for "FTP client" in your favorite search engine- you will likely be overwhelmed by the amount of FTP clients available.

   If you use Windows, we have found WS_FTP to be very useful. For the Macintosh OS, Fetch is the most popular (and friendliest) FTP client available. Detailed FTP instructions for both of these popular FTP clients is given below.

2. Connect to your Virtual Host via FTP using your login id and your login password that you received in your E-mail Configuration Letter. Do not login as anonymous, as you will not have access to the directories and files you need.

3. When you login to your Virtual Host, you will be placed in your home directory.

4. All html documents and graphics should be uploaded to the home directory. Here you will find a file titled "index.html" - this is the default page that is displayed when you access your web site with a browser. You may upload your html documents and graphics to the home directory, or into any subdirectory under the htdocs directory.

   If you transfer a file named test.htm to your htdocs directory, you can access that file using the following URL - http://www.your-domain.name/test.htm. If you make a subdirectory titled "documents" in your home directory, and then transfer a file called info.html to that directory, it can then be accessed by the URL - http://www.your-domain.name/documents/info.html

5. IMPORTANT: Be sure you ftp all your HTML files, as well as any text files such as cgi script source code in ASCII format! All your image files need to be transferred in BINARY format. Your FTP program should allow you to select the file transfer mode, either ASCII or BINARY. Most FTP clients have an "Automatic" transfer mode option that can be set - when this option is selected the FTP client will automatically determine which file transfer mode to use when you upload or download files.

1. Establish a connection to your Virtual Host by selecting the "Connect" button. Specify your company name as the "Profile Name", your domain name (or temporary domain name if your domain name has not yet been registered) as the "Host Name/Address", your login name as the "User ID", and your login password as the "Password".
2. Once a connection is established, two columns will appear on your screen. The column on the left displays files on your computer while the column on the right represents directories and files on your Virtual Host.
3. You will want to navigate to the appropriate folder on your Virtual Host (the right side of the dialog). This is the directory where you will store your web content.
4. Select the appropriate files or directories that you want to transfer from your computer (the left side) to your Virtual Host (the right side) by selecting them with your mouse. You can select more than one by holding down the shift key or ctrl key.
5. Once these files are selected you simply hit the arrow "-->" pointing toward the right or toward the Virtual Host directory window. Be sure that all HTML documents and cgi script are transferred in ASCII mode. Graphics should be transferred in Binary format. The latest versions of WS_FTP provide an "Auto" toggle button you can select- WS_FTP will then automatically determine which mode to transfer the file (we recommend you use the "Auto" mode).

1. Establish a connection to your Virtual Host by selecting the "New Connection" button under the "File" menu. Specify your domain name (or temporary domain name if your domain name has not yet been registered) as the "Host", your login name as the "User ID", and your login password as the "Password".
2. You will want to navigate to the appropriate folder on your Virtual Host. This is the directory where you will store your web content.
3. To upload content to your Virtual Host you can either drag files and folders from your desktop to the Fetch window or select the "Put File..." button and select files and folders.
4. Be sure that all HTML documents and cgi script are transferred in ASCII mode. Graphics should be transferred in Binary format. Fetch also has a setting, "Automatic", that you can select- Fetch will then automatically determine which mode to transfer the file (we recommend you use the "Automatic" mode).

To use a console FTP client you will first need access to a "command prompt". This can be gained by opening a console window. You can do this in Windows 95/NT by looking in your "Start->Program" menu for "MS-DOS prompt" or "Command Prompt". You can also "Run" the command prompt executable by selecting "Start->Run" and entering the executable path "c:/windows/command/command.com" or "c:/winnt/system32/cmd.exe" (as the case may be).

Now that you understand console windows and command prompts (or more specifically how to gain access to one), you need to understand how to use a console FTP client. To open up an FTP session at a command prompt simply type "ftp [remote host]", where [remote host] is the site you are attempting to contact (i.e. ftp.xyz.com). This is where is gets fun because you know can see what's going on "behind the scenes" when you were using a graphical FTP client.

When you open an FTP session with a remote host, you will more than likely be prompted for a username and password pair (sounds logical enough). After you have successfully logged into the remote ftp site, you can navigate around using the "cd" command to change your current working directory on the remote site. Type "ls" or "dir" to list the files in your current working directory on the remote site.

To upload from your local machine (or the machine from which you initiated the FTP session) to the remote host, you use the command "put". For example, to upload a file in your local working directory named "index.html" to your current working directory on the remote site, you would type "put index.html test.html". This will transfer the file "index.html" to the remote host and store it under the name "test.html". If you would like to store the local file as the same name on the remote host simply type something like "put index.html index.html" or simply "put index.html". To upload multiple files, use the command "mput" using wildcards such as "mput *.html". You may want to turn off the confirm prompt by typing the command "prompt" before you upload multiple files.

To download content from a remote host (or the machine to which you opened the FTP session) to your local machine, you use the command "get". For example, to download a file to your local working directory named "test.html" from your current working directory on the remote site, you would type "get test.html index.html". This will transfer the file "test.html" from the remote host and store it under the name "index.html" on your local computer. To download multiple files, use the command "mget" using wildcards such as "mget *.html". You may want to turn off the confirm prompt by typing the command "prompt" before you download multiple files.

As was mentioned in the General Instructions section, it is important to upload and download ascii text files such as HTML content in ASCII mode. Likewise, binary content such as gif/jpg images should be uploaded and downloaded in BINARY mode. To change your upload mode to ASCII simply type "ascii". To change your upload mode to BINARY simply type "binary". Other important FTP commands are summarized in the table below. Arguments for commands are indicated using brackets [ ]: