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WinSCP
Transferring Files to Your Web Space
FTP (file transfer protocol) is the most common way that users
transfer web files from their personal computer to the web server. To
transfer files to the server, you need to use an FTP client. Many
clients exist for Windows machines and you can use any FTP client
of your choice. Below is a step-by-step tutorial that will walk you
through the steps of creating your first homepage and using WinSCP
to transfer your files to your new site.
Begin by downloading and installing WinSCP.
- Click here to download the program. When your web browser asks you whether you want to RUN or SAVE the program, choose RUN.
- Follow the setup prompts of the WinSCP installer to complete installation. You may need to reboot your computer at the end of the installation process.
Using WinSCP
After you have downloaded and installed WinSCP to
your computer, you are ready to transfer web files to your server.
- Run the program by double clicking on the WinSCP icon on your desktop.
- The WinSCP login window will appear. Enter your website login information:
- Host name: ftp.your-site.com (replace "your-site.com" with the real name of your website)
- User name: user@your-site.com (replace "user@your-site.com" with your own admin user email address)
- Password: (enter your password here)
- Private key file: (leave blank)
- File Protocol: FTP
- In the left box, click on "Environment->Directories".
- In the Remote Directory box, enter /var/www/html
- If you are using this program on your own personal computer and it is OK to save your password, click on the Save button.
- Click on the Login button to connect.
If you have saved your login information in the previous step, then
in the future you can reconnect to your site simply by clicking on the
Login button.
You are now ready to transfer files. You must, of course, have
HTML files to transfer. Your main page should be called
index.html (all lowercase). This is the first file that
visitors will see when they go to your site. If you do not have any
HTML files yet, you can use Windows Notepad to create an
index.html file with the following contents:
<html>
<head>
<title>My first HTML page</title>
</head>
<body>
Welcome to my homepage.
</body>
</html>
To publish this page on the web, start up WinSCP and open a
connection to your website by selecting your website profile which you
created earlier and then clicking on the Login button. Once the
connection is open, drag the index.html file you just created
on your hard drive to the right-side WinSCP window. By dragging
the file over, you are copying the file from your local computer to
the web server. Repeat this for all the files you wish to
transfer. You can also transfer files in the opposite direction - when you
drag a file from the FTP explorer to a folder on your hard drive, you
are copying files from the web server to you local computer.
The moment of truth. Open up your web browser and go to
http://www.your-site.com/, where your-site.com is the
name of your website. You should see your own homepage. If so,
congratulations... you have successfully created your own homepage!
Happy web publishing!
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