FTPing (uploading) Your Work

Before you upload you site, you should run through every page, every link and every image to make sure that everything is working. It is a good idea to have several Internet browsers on your computer so that you can see what your page will look like as different people look at it.

Once you have got everything working locally (your own hard drive) it's time to upload or FTP your new site to your ISP's server. To do this you will need a FTP program. Here are a few that we recommend:

"WS-FTP" and it is included with the disks you are taking home.

Using your FTP program is very simple, open the program up. Click on new connection. Type in your site URL, username and password. Now click on connect.

This will plop you right in the directory where you need to be. Most FTP programs have two windows on them. The left, your hard drive and the right window for the server's contents. Simply double-click on the files or directories on your hard drive and they will be uploaded to the server.

NOTE: The first page that the sever looks for must be named index.html (your homepage). If not, then you will get a view of the contents of your site, instead of looking at the homepage. Re-name your homepage to index.html and it will be the default page that will come up if someone goes to your site.

Once your entire site is uploaded to the server, go to the web address and re-check everything. Sometimes you will have to rename some of the files to get them to work properly. This is particularly true when you are using Windows 3.xx or an older DOS format program. The reason is, the old DOS format only accepted file formats of 8 chars. for a name and 3 chars. for an extension. With the invent of Windows 95, this has all changed. Unix/Linux systems can have filenames of any size or structure, BUT, the operating system is very "case sensitive". In other words, if you have a file on your home DOS/Windows machine called "image.GIF" and you are calling it "image.gif" from your HTML page, when you upload this file as "image.GIF" to the Unix/Linux server - it will *not* load until you rename the file "image.gif" - get it? All same case sensitve. It is also common that graphic files get corrupt as they are uploaded as well as HTML files, remember, HTML is a "TEXT" language and it must be uploaded in ASCII format - any other programs like "GIFS", "JPG'S" or even "ZIP" files must all be transferred in Binary format.
If your files get corrupted, simply re-transfer them in the right format.

Back to the HTML Tutorial Index