Publishing your website using Fireftp

Posted by admin

October 3, 2009

The process of transferring a file from your computer to your website is often referred to as “uploading”. This guide only deals with how you can transfer a file to your web server using a free FTP client known as fireftp. Fireftp is a great add-on for the Firefox web browser. There are many other free FTP programs but this guide will only deal with fireftp.

What is FTP?

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Both HTTP and FTP protocols deal with transferring data across the Internet. FTP is used to upload and download files from your computer to a web server. Download http://fireftp.mozdev.org

Once downloaded follow the the on-screen intructions to install fireftp.

Using Fire FTP

Click on Tools the select FireFTP
Once FireFTP is open follow these steps to Connect to your Server.
Click on Manage Accounts
Select New…
Go to the "Account Name" field and enter the hostname (usually the website name, i.e cityofmonash.com)
Go to the "Host" field and enter the hostname (as above)
Go to the "Login" field and enter your FTP username as setup in VHCS2 (ie ftp@cityofmonash.com)
Go to the "Password" field and enter your FTP password (please note this is case sensitive
Click OK to save the account information and to close the dialog.
Click on "Connect" to establish a connection.
Click OK on the FireFTP pop-up and fireftp will connect to the FTP server

Once you have Connected, you will find that the local files are on your left and the remote files on your right. You can click on a local file and press the arrow pointing to the right to upload a file to the server.

Similarly, you can click on a file on the right side and press the arrow pointing to the left to
download a file from the server to your computer.

Where should I publish the website content?

All website content files need to be placed in the htdocs directory or folder.

What filename should I use as the default page for my Website?

The web server will look for the following files when no page in the URL is provided.

index.html index.cgi index.pl index.php index.xhtml (all files are case sensitive)

What file permissions should I use?

The UNIX security model allows you to set different levels of access to a file for different groups of people. This allows you to let the web server modify a file via a CGI script, for instance, while preventing other users from having normal access to the file. There are three groups in terms of file access, and three different permission types they can receive.

File Permissions And Groups

The groups are:

User – the ‘user’ group consists only of the owner of the file (your account, in most cases)
Group – the ‘group’ group consists of the other users on the server — you can usually remove their permissions entirely if you think it is necessary
Other – the ‘other’ group consists of everyone else — most importantly, the web server falls into the ‘other’ category

The potential permissions are:

Read – the ‘read’ permission allows a user or program the ability to read the data in a file
Write – the ‘write’ permission allows a user or program the ability to write new data into a file, and to remove data from it
Execute – the ‘execute’ permission allows a user or program the ability to execute a file, if it is a program or a script

Setting Permissions

You can set permissions via FTP by right-clicking (clicking and holding for Mac users) on the file and select Properties in fireftp.

Most of your html files will do fine with a permission of 644 (Owner=Read+Write Group=Read Other=Read). Most script files will need a permission of 755 (Owner=Read+Write+Execute Group=Read+Execute Other=Read+Execute).

Can FireFTP resume downloads?

Yes it can. If you lose your connection, FireFTP will automatically try to reconnect and resume downloading. After this, you can resume a file just by trying to download it again. FireFTP will notice that you have a partial file already downloaded and will ask you whether you want to resume from where you left off click "Resume".

How do I rename a file/make a directory/delete files?

Right-click on the file lists. A context menu will appear showing the available functions you have, along with related keyboard shortcuts.

What is the "View on the Web" feature and what do you put in "Host" and "Prefix" for it to work?

The "View on the Web" feature is primarily designed for web developers so that they can preview images and webpages within FireFTP (using Firefox's latest Canvas technology). It can be found on the "Account Manager" dialog, under the Advanced tab.

If experiencing problems with your connection, follow these steps.

Do you have the latest versions of FireFTP and Firefox? The latest version can be found at http://fireftp.mozdev.org/
Are you behind a firewall? Try turning it off temporarily to see if it is the source of your problem. If so, you might have to configure your software to allow FireFTP to access the Internet.
Does your server allow only active mode? Try turning off "Passive Mode" in FireFTP under your account's configuration options. This is found on the "Account Manager" dialog, under the Connection tab.
Do you use a proxy? Try setting the proxy under Preferences in the Connections sub menu.
Have you been able to connect with other FTP clients? Please check to see if the problem is reproducible with other FTP clients.

This should allow your FTP client to establish a connection.

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