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FTP stands for "file transfer protocol". It's a way to transfer files to and from your hosting account directly from your computer. Most of you who use a shopping cart or site builder system mostly upload images through the "Browse" or "Upload" feature in your pages or products. However if you want to have more photos show within your product pages or anywhere else on your site, then it can be easier to upload them all at once via FTP.
What you will need to use FTP:
1. An FTP program - This is software that is installed directly on your computer and allows it to connect directly to your hosting account on our server. We use SmartFTP but there are also free programs available. Just do a search online for FTP program. Install this program on your computer and open it up once it's installed.
2. Hostname/Address & Login Info - once you are in your FTP program, to connect to your account you'll need to enter the hostname/address to connect to as well as your FTP username and password. This info is included in your New Hosting Account Welcome email sent to you when you signed up for hosting services with us. Plug in the hostname and login info and there will be some sort of button to "connect".
Once you connect, it will bring up a list of folders which are present on your hosting account and will look something like this (but will depend on what program you are using):
The list on the left in this case is the list of folders on the server. Your FTP program may also include a list of files on YOUR computer so you can drag and drop.
The public_html folder is the folder that contains your site. I highly recommend not deleting anything unless you really know what you are doing! Uploading usually isn't a problem, don't be afraid to try it. If you upload an image to the wrong place, it's not going to break your site.
TIP: Think of the public_html folder as your homepage of your site at www.yourdomain.com. So if you upload an image named picture.jpg to the public_html folder, the URL to that image will be: http://www.yourdomain.com/picture.jpg
If you upload that image to the public_html/images folder, the URL to that image will be: http://www.yourdomain.com/images/picture.jpg
So you can see the hierarchy of folders on the server directly corresponds to the resulting URL of the file uploaded.
SO HOW DO I UPLOAD?
With most FTP programs you can drag and drop files to folders on the server by simply dragging the files from your desktop or anywhere on your computer to the appropriate folder on the server shown in the FTP program. That's about it. Now, I know this may be fuzzy because it may not match what you see on your computer screen exactly, but give it a shot and see how you do. If you have questions, feel free to contact us.
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