FTP Through Your Browser
A Tutorial By Pia Breshears

This tutorial will help you learn how to FTP (File Tranfer Protocol) through your browser. FTP is the protocol for exchanging files over the internet. It may sound a little complicated but it's very easy and you don't have to be very technical to do it. All you really have to know is where your files or folders are and what you want to upload. Just follow this tutorial step by step.

Step 1

On your desktop go to My Computer. Double click on it to open the window.

Step 2

Once the window opens, look for your (C:) drive ,thats where all your documents should be, unless you placed them somewhere else, if you did place them somewhere else like on your desktop for example go ahead and open your website files and jump to step 4. If not keep reading...

Step 3

Once you are in your ( C ): drive browse to the folder that has all the files of your website or the file or folder you want to upload. Open it.

Step 4

Once you open the folder with the website's files that you want to upload, size the window so it'll fit on half of the screen and drag it to one side. It doesn't matter if you place to the left or right side of the screen, like I have in the image below. I put it to the right so you can see my little friends on my desktop..

Step 5

Open Internet Explorer.

Step 6

On the address bar type in ftp://yourdomain.com (don't really type youdomain.com type the domain name of your website) Just make sure you do ftp:// and NOT http://

Step 7

Now if you did it right a little pop-up window will show asking you for user name and password. Type it in and hit the Log on button.

Step 8

Now you are looking at the files and folders that makeup your website. From this point on you have to be very careful on what you do to the files in this window. As I said before all those folders and files make up your website you might not want to play around with these files since all this is live. Now click on the folder with your website's name on it to open it.

Step 9

Now size the FTP window to fit next to the other one like we did on step 4. It should look like the image below. Two windows side by side. Just make sure you know which one is the FTP window and which one is your computer. It's not hard just look for the one that has the address bar and that is the FTP window.

Step 10

Ok we are almost done. Now all you have to do is look for the file or folder you want to upload in your computer window. You can select several at the same time by hitting the Ctrl key and clicking on what you want to select.

Step 11

Now you are going to drag and drop the files or folders selected from your computer window to the FTP window. If you don't know how don't worry it's very simple, just click on the files you selected and without un-clicking drag your mouse to the other window (FTP window) and then let go. If you are uploading a folder that doesn't exist on your website make sure you drop it in a white area, this way we make sure we are not putting files or folders in the wrong place. Now if you only want to upload a file thats inside a folder make sure that on both windows you have the same folder opened. For example if you want to upload a file in the images folder, open the images folder on the FTP window and on your computer window and then drag and drop. If you go in the wrong folder you can always hit the back button.

Step 12

Once you dragged and dropped the files to the FTP window the uploading process will begin. I small window will pop-up showing you the progress.

Step 13

If a second small window pops up, like in the image below, that means you are trying to upload a file that has the same name or it already exists. Go to the next step to see that small window a little closer.

Step 14

If you made changes to an existing file and now you want to upload the changes go ahead and click "yes". If you didn't make any changes and just want to upload a new file click "no" and in your computer window check if you named the file something that already exists. If so, just change the name of the file (make sure you do it on your computer window) and try again. That means drag and drop that file again.

Step 15

Now let's say you uploaded something you weren't supposed to... well guess what?? you just messed up the whole website !! Just kidding!! No big deal just right click on the file you uploaded by mistake and hit delete. Just make sure you are only deleting what you uploaded by mistake, you don't want to delete anything else because even though the folders and files there have strange names and don't really make sense, they are VERY important so it's better if we just leave them there.

When you are done uploading everything you had to upload, you can just close both windows and make sure you check your work. Go to your website and see if what you uploaded is there and in the right place. You might want to go around and check the other pages just to make sure you didn't move any files around or anything like that by mistake. If you did and your website is not looking right or if something is not working right, but you are not sure of what happened you can go back step by step to see what you did wrong. If it got too complicated you might want to contact your web developer ASAP and explain to him what you did so he or she can help you fix the problem.

If on the other hand you want download instead of uploading you have to follow the same steps above but instead of dragging and dropping from the computer window to the FTP window, just drag and drop from the FTP window to your computer window. Just make sure you don't replace or overwrite files you don't want replaced.