FTP ~ How to FTP Files

This is the next in the series of wordpress tutorials. You can find all the tutorials, in order,  under the “How to Build a Niche Blog” heading on the articles page.

As the new year approaches I find myself thinking, planning and plotting for next year. You’re responses to the survey were immeasurably helpful and I thank you so much for taking the time to answer. From your responses I can see there are a lot of  things that you’d like me to cover, and a lot of things I would love to talk about besides just tutorials. I’ve decided I will keep the tutorial posts coming on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I will do other posts on other days of the week. I am thinking I will be writing more FAQ type posts ~ you guys had a LOT of questions ~ and I’d love to answer them. I will also be writing more posts on staying/getting organized and internet marketing mindset ~ how to be successful in Internet marketing. All of which are topics I have wanted to write more about, but wasn’t sure if you all wanted to hear about it. Now I’m quite certain you do.

I will continue to send emails when each blog post is up ~ I will start adding a little notifier to the end of the subject line ~ like [wp tutorial] [mindset] or something like that so you will know what they are about before you open the email. Once I decide on the notifier I will keep it the same every time so you can use them to create rules in your email to move them wherever you want them to go.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season ~ no matter what you celebrate. It’s almost a new year ~ that’s my absolute favorite time of year. While I *know* each day brings me a brand new beginning and a new opportunity there’s just something full of hope and promise about a new year! This is going to be a fantastic year… for all of us. I can just feel it. So let’s get started.

FTP – How to FTP Files

I just have to say these technical posts are my least favorite to write. I’ll tell you why. Because when I learned how to do all this stuff I just fumbled my way through it. I tried a bunch of different things until something finally worked, and now it’s difficult to reverse engineer it all from the beginning to tell you exactly how to do it. With that said ~ I’ll do my best, and if you have trouble your hosting company may be able to help you better than I with the specifics.

What is FTP?

FTP stands for file transfer protocol. In English that means it’s a way to move something from your computer to your hosting account so you can use it on your website.

You can FTP just about anything to your hosting, themes, plugins, opt in pages, entire websites (if you’re making html sites) and so much more. Before you panic, we’re really only going to use FTP (at least for now) in case of wordpress failure.

WordPress has made it super easy to get your plugins and themes uploaded and installed now ~ so you don’t even need to use FTP, unless you get some weird error message. If you get an error message when trying to install something throug your wordpress dashboard, well then, you’re going to have to resort to old school FTP.

Here we go.

To FTP you are going to need an FTP client ~ or a program that will do the work for you. There are many many different FTP clients out there. I use one, and one only. I have no experience with any others, so I’m going to show you what I know. If you are using something else and it’s working for you ~ then by all means, just keep right on trucking. If  you’ve never done FTP, then come on with me.

FireFTP

The ftp client I use is FireFTP. It is an addon for Firefox, and is super easy to use and really easy to install. If you’re not using firefox you can try Filezilla ~ it will work on any browser and multiple operating systems. The process will most likely be almost identical.

1. Download fireftp. You can download it here. You may get a message from your browser that it wouldn’t allow it to install on your computer. Just hit the “allow” button on the right hand side to bypass that and allow it to install.

2. Install FireFTP. You will get a pop up window asking if you want to install fireftp. Hit yes, and it will do all the work.

3. continue to follow instructions as it installs.

Once you have Fireftp installed on your computer it will hang out in the tools link at the top of your screen.

Click the tools link and then you will get a drop down menu. FireFTP will be one of the options. When you click it it will open in a new window.

When FireFTP opens you will see a bunch of stuff that looks pretty confusing ~ but it’s pretty easy once you know what it’s showing you.

On the left hand side is everything that is on YOUR computer. You can scan all around in your folders and directories, on your desk top and in your hard drive to find whatever it is you’re looking for.

On the right hand side is your hosting account. (you can’t see it right yet because we aren’t connected yet). Here is where you will see all the directories for all your sites. You can manevuer through all of them as well to upload files to wherever it is you want them.

Let’s sign in.

You will need the ftp address you received in your welcome email from your hosting company. You are going to need this address to access your hosting account via FTP. It will be different depending on what hosting company you are using so I can’t just tell you what it’s going to be.

To get started you will have to set up an account. You can do this by clicking the drop down menu button on the top left hand side.

When you click that you will get some options ~ one of which is to “create an account”. This is what you want to do.

You will get a pop up box you need to fill in to create your account.

Account name: choose something that you will know which account this is. You can use your hosting company name or whatever. This just lets you know what account you are accessing from the drop down menu.

Category: you can leave this blank.

Host: this is the ftp address you were given in your email. It will probably be something like ftp.yoururl.com

ID ~ this is the login information you need to log in to your HOSTING account. This is what you use to log into your cpanel. Just put in your login and your password.

Save ~ click ok when you’re done to save your settings.

Now lets’ log in.

Logging in is as simple as clicking the “connect” button.

When you click the connect button the FTP client will sync up with your hosting account and you will be able to see all your files on your hosting account.

These files are set up just like they are on your hosting account, they just appear right here for you.

You will find all your wordpress sites under “public html”.

You will need to click on the public html folder to get to your sites and the directories that go along with them.

Let’s FTP something!

While you could easily upload zipped files through your worpdress dashboard you will have to unzip the files before you can FTP them. If you FTP them while they are zipped they will not work.  Go to wherever you keep your plugins/themes (whatever it is you want to upload via ftp) and make sure you have unzipped them. If you don’t have an unzipper program you can download winzip for free.  Unzipping is another one of those technical things I just stumbled onto how it worked so I can’t exactly explain it to you ~ in fact, I don’t even know where I got my unzip program or how it got there. All I know is when I right click on a zipped file there’s an option to unzip ~ so sorry, not much help there.

(See you don’t have to know everything about everything to make money online you just have to know how to make it work.)

Once you’re files are unzipped you can go to your FTP client, connect to your hosting account and then move the files over via FTP. Let’s take a look at how that works.

Because I needed to use the whole screen to show you the FTP process I can’t fit it on this page.  Click here to watch the how to FTP video.

For the non video folks:

1. Go to the folder where you are keeping the file you want to move to your hosting.

2. Click the file (one click to highlight) the file you want to transfer. Make sure you are on the deepest folder you can get to without seeing the actual files. (sometimes there is a folder in a folder, and if you don’t get to the bottom folder your file won’t work)

3. Once your file is highlighted click public html on the server side. Find the site you want to put your file in. Click on the site folder to open it up and see the rest of the directories for the site.

4. If uploading themes/plugins/something for wordpress click the wp-content folder to get to the place you want to upload the file to.

5. Choose the right folder for what you’re uploading. If it’s a plugin, click the plugin folder ~ if it’s a theme, click the theme folder.

6. Click the file you want to upload and then click the green arrow pointing toward the server side. This will move the file to the folder in your hosting account.

7. Viola. You’ve FTPd a file.

Once you have uploaded the file to wordpress you will still need to go into your dashboard and activate it or choose it. If it’s a plugin you’ll have to go to the plugin area and activate the plugin. If  it’s a theme you’ll have to go to the theme area and choose it as the theme you want to show up.

You can FTP lots of things, but like I said, if you’re doing wordpress sites  you probably won’t have to do much FTPing since they’ve made it so easy to do it from the dashboard.

If you have FTP questions you’re welcome to ask and I’ll see if I can help you. If you are seriously stuck it might be worth grabbing a 30 minute coaching session and I can walk you through it on skype or in a video conference or something.