FTP appears to cause the greatest amount of stress, misunderstanding and problems to website owners, so on this page we'll take a look at what FTP is, and how your web server is structured...
The UK Trading web servers are very powerful computers, and offer many facilities and features not found with other ISP's hosting services... This inevitably means that inexperienced users initially find that navigating the file structure and server operations can be a little daunting.
However, once users have gained a grasp of the 'basics', they usually say something like "Duhhh.. it's just common sense isn't it?"
Our servers are quite robust, and there is very little you can do that can cause harm to either the server or your hosting account so don't be too afraid to explore and experiment.
FTP (file transfer protocol) in general, is the mechanism used to transfer files from your PC to remote computer. In this case you are transferring your html files from your PC to your website hosting server (which simplistically is just another computer)
Because you wouldn't want just anyone to be able to access and change your files, your web server will expect you to send it a valid username/password combination in order to log into your server.
And importantly... It will also want to know what folder to upload the files to...
The 'root' of your web server is similar to the C: drive on your computer and contains 4 main directories.. 'certs, logs, users, web'... And inside the users folder there are 2 'sub' folders *username & web (*Note: username will match your login username, and won't be called 'username')
Tip: By convention, Unix servers use the notation / (forward slash) to denote 'root'.
You can also use this notation in your HTML files... example:
the hyperlink /mydirectory/myfile.html tells the server to begin looking for 'mydirectory' at the 'root' of the domain, and when found, find and display the file myfile.html.
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Normally, when you log in for FTP, your application will log you directly into the web folder for 'username' because the login username that you used matched the folder name.. So, You will be put into
/users/username/web/
To upload files that you want to be shown in response to someone typing www.yourdomainname.ext into their browsers address window, you will need to go back 2 directory levels to the folder /web which is below the folder called 'users'. HTML files can also be uploaded to the web folder /users/username/web/ If your account supports multiple users, then each user you add will show up in the folder structure as another anotherusername/web. |
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