How to Use FTP

Log in | File Upload | Folder Upload/Directories | Download | Remove a File/Folder

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and it is necessary for getting files up on our beloved world wide web, if you don’t have access to CPanel or some other web uploading system. Even if you do have cPanel, you might be like me and use FTP anyways. This tutorial will teach you how.

First, you must install an FTP client. I use FileZilla, which you can download for free here, and this tutorial will walk you through the steps using FileZilla, which in my opinion is an excellent FTP client that gets the job done.

Click screenshots to view full size.

Log into your site

When you first open FileZilla, it should look something like this:

At the top of the screen, there are four empty boxes where you must enter your login information. They are labeled "host", "username," "password," and "port."

If you are hosted on a subdomain you are most likely given FTP information in this format:

• username:
• password:
• server:
• port:

In this case, you enter your username in the username box, your password in the password box, the server in the host box, and finally the port in the port box, though if the port is 21, you can typically leave this out if you’d like. After entering the above information, press enter/return on your keyboard, and you will be logged in.

If you own your own domain, however, enter your domain in the host box, and again your username/password/port info in their respective boxes, press enter/return, and you are logged in. If that doesn’t work, you may need to enter ftp.yourdomian.com in the host box instead.

Now that you are logged into your FTP account, you will have access to the files on your website. On the left are the files on your computer, and your website’s files are on the right. Here I have logged into Broken Fall so you can see:

Upload a file to your site

Now that you are logged in, it is time to start uploading files! To do so, go through your files on the left until you find the one you want to upload. Do this as you would go through your files normally—double clicking on folders to open them until you come to the file you are looking for.

Next, go over to the right side where your website’s files are located, and go through those until you are where you want to upload to—either a folder or the main page of your site. If you have a subdomain, you can upload directly onto your site without getting to a certain place in your website files, and everything will still show up. If you own a domain, however, you must upload into the folder called "public_html." Of course you can have folders within that, but everything you want to show up must be in there somehow.

Once you have found both the file you would like to upload and the place you would like it to go, simply double click your file to upload it! You will see a green status bar at the bottom of the screen in what is called the queue, and once it says 100%, your upload is complete!

Upload a folder/create a directory

If instead you would like to upload an entire folder and its contents you cannot double click the folder to upload, since instead it will open to reveal the files it contains. To upload a folder, you can right click on the folder and press upload. This folder will then become a directory on your site, and within that directory will be the files that were inside the folder when you uploaded it.

Another way to create a directory is to right click anywhere in the area to the right that is boxed in below and select “Create directory.” You will then be prompted to enter a name for your directory. Do so, and press “OK.” Your new directory has now been created.

Download from your site to your computer

If you would like to use FTP to download a file from your site, you can also do that by repeating the same process as to upload, but in reverse. To download, find the file in your site’s files on the right that you want to download, choose where on your computer you want it to download to on the left, double click the site file to initiate the download (or right click and press download for a folder), and wait for the queue to say that it is complete. Then, check your computer where you told it to send the file, and it should be there.

Remove a file

To remove a file from your site, you can simply click the file or folder that you want to remove in your site’s files on the right half of the screen and press delete on your keyboard.

I hope this tutorial was helpful to you, and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.