What is “FTP” ?

When I teach people to build their websites,  the topic of “FTP” comes up, and I’d like to clear up what that means.  “FTP” stands for File Transfer Protocol.  That’s geek speak for moving files from your computer to the server and vice versa.

See the images below.

Downloading to Your Computer

And the opposite

Uploading to the Server

When you have your own website on your own servers, sometimes you need to move files between your computer and your server.  This can be done in many ways, and with many software programs.

The webhosting company I recommend is www.BlueHostNow.com because they make it very easy to do these file transfers.

You can also use a program called “Filezilla”  www.filezilla-project.org which is free software to transfer files.

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