Uploading Files

For non-Microsoft® FrontPage® users, an FTP Client is the most common method of transferring your files up to the server. Following these steps will ensure that your Web site is uploaded and visible on our servers, and allow viewers from the outside to visit your site easily.

Once the account is created on the server (usually one to two hours after signup), you should be ready to upload any files you have created for your web site. You can start by installing and running an FTP client, such as WS-FTP (for Windows 95/3.x users), Transmit or Fetch (for Macintosh users).

Important Note for FrontPage users: Although we provide FTP access to FrontPage accounts, it is not to be used to upload your pages to your account. You should only use FTP to upload to your public ftp directory or to upload scripts to your cgi-bin directory. If you use FTP to modify your site (html files, etc.), you will run into errors the next time you use FrontPage to access your Web site, and the FrontPage extensions may become corrupt. Also, do not remove any files from your FrontPage account with an FTP client. The only files that you may remove with FTP are the files that you put there with FTP (cgi scripts and files in your public FTP directory).

If your domain name is registered and fully functioning, then you can use ftp.yourdomain.com as the 'Host Name' to access your account with the FTP client. If this does not work, please try using the IP address for your account instead. In any case, you will be required to log into the server with your User Name and Password. Note also that logging in with a Web Browser, such as Netscape or Internet Explorer, will NOT give you access to the entire account. Only an FTP client will give you total access to your account space.

Now you can begin transferring files to the server, but please keep these points in mind when uploading:

• UNIX systems are case sensitive. So a file named redman.txt would be a separate file from one named REDMAN.txt . If you can't seem to find a file on the server that you just uploaded, check to see that you are using the right case.
  
  
• UNIX filenames also may contain almost any type of character, and sometimes this may confuse FTP clients. If you have trouble retrieving or linking to a file, try using wildcards in FTP to delete it, and replace it with a file that doesn't have spaces or other special characters in its name.
  
  
• Our HTTP server recognizes file formats by extension. This means a client retrieving a file named .htm or .html will be told it is in HTML format. Make sure that you have the proper extensions when uploading your files.
  
  
• CGI scripts must be in the /cgi-bin subdirectory and have file permissions set to 'executable'. Otherwise they will not run correctly.
  
  
• You should upload graphic files (such as .jpg or .gif files) in 'Binary' mode with FTP, and HTML or scripts in 'Ascii' mode in order to ensure that there are no extraneous 'control' characters in your scripts or pages.
  
  
• You may create an unlimited number of subdirectories (folders) within your account space to organize your site using the FTP command 'mkdir'. To have a page automatically load up when a browser goes to a directory, name a file default.html (make sure its lowercase) and place it in that directory. If an default.html file is not present, the Web browser will default to a list of all the files in that directory. This applies to the root directory as well.

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