FTP & TELNET

FTP - FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It also is the general term for a program (or client) which allows you to upload and download files between your computer and your web server. You establish a connection with your username and password. If you do not already have an FTP client program such as WS-FTP or CuteFTP, you can download one from our Resources page in our Support section.

There are a few main facts you need to know in order to use FTP.

• FTP file transfers are performed in either ASCII mode or BINARY mode. Most FTP programs can automatically select the appropriate mode, and you can also force whichever mode you need. Generally, text files and html files should be transferred in ASCII mode, while executable programs, code, and images (GIF, JPG, etc..) should be transferred in BINARY mode.
• If you are uploading any Perl scripts, they must be uploaded in ASCII mode (they are essentially readable text files).
• To establish a connection with your ftp or web server, you must provide 3 items: yourdomain.com, username, and password.

Telnet/SSH - Another client or program you may want to use is Telnet. After you "log on" to your server, via Telnet, you will be sitting at a command prompt, similar to what you see at an MS DOS window. This is also called "shell access", you are at a command line and communicating directly with the operating system of the server. From here you can do all sorts of cool things if you know what you want to do. Typically, you probably won't need to use Telnet much unless you have a need for it (such as programming in Perl, changing read/write privileges of files and directories, performing Unix commands, etc..) For examples of basic Unix commands, see the Unix Commands section in this Manual.

For security purposes, if you wish to use Telnet you must use a client which uses a secure connection. This is what is meant by SSH (secure shell) in the term Telnet/SSH. The standard Telnet client that comes with the Windows operating system is not secure. You can download one from our Resources page in our Support section.

Many web hosting companies do not offer Telnet or shell access with their standard web hosting accounts. This is another great feature we offer in our standard web hosting package for no additional charge.

Anonymous FTP - Your account also has an "Anonymous FTP site". This is an area of your account in which files can be uploaded or downloaded (via FTP) by anyone in the world without a password. This area is necessarily separate from web space and password protected FTP space for obvious reasons. If you want both upload and download anonymous FTP, you may want a read-only subdirectory for distributing files and a separate write-only subdirectory for receiving files. This is to prevent files that you are distributing from being destroyed accidentally, and to prevent files uploaded to you from being distributed to others before you examine them. This area appears as the 'anonftp' directory in your home directory.