Bit Literate: The Digital Survival Guide for Adult Learners
FTP, HTTP, and Urls - A Brief Overview
View the Narrated FileZilla (FTP) Tutorial
Do you know what FTP is?
If you know anything at all about FTP you probably know that an FTP client program can be used to move files from one computer to another computer, typically from your local desktop computer to a web server on the Internet.
But FTP is more than just a program on your computer. As the name -File Transfer Protocol - implies, FTP, is actually a networking protocol, a protocol designed specifically for moving files.
And the use of FTP actually requires software on both ends. For your FTP client software to transfer a file it must connect with FTP server software running on the server you want to use. The FTP server software allows you to move files to a folder that is set up for you on the server. This folder, and the login ID and password used to make the connection, represent your FTP account on that server.
The folder that you see when you first connect to a server using FTP is sometimes called your root folder. All the files and folders that you can work with are in that folder, or in a sub folder below it.
So that's a bit of background on FTP, where does HTTP come into this? Well, HTTP is another networking protocol that allows you to connect with a server and work with files on that server. Of course, the client we use to connect with an HTTP server is usually a web browser, and in addition to retrieving the file that we want, the web browser knows how to display the file that we ask for in a very specific way, yes, as a web page. It's easy to overlook the fact that web browsers are actually HTTP network clients. When you request a web page by typing a URL into your browser, the web browser is acting a network client. It retrieves the page and then it renders it using the HTML code contained in that page. That's all a web page is. A file containing HTML commands.
But this leads us back to FTP. When you create a web page you typically do it on your local computer, it's just a file you create on your local computer. Of course, no one can see it there so if you want others to view your page you have to move it to a publicly accessible web server and that's what FTP is used for.
So let's look at an example. As an Empire State College student you may be called upon to create and publish a web page. This is an increasingly common task, and it's something that every adult learner should know how to do.
So first you create a page, which as you now know is just a text file that contains HTML commands. Next you want to move that file to a web server (using FTP) so that you and your instructor will be able to access the page using a web browser.
For this you need an FTP account so that you can connect to the server. If you're doing this as part of course work at Empire State College you will have been provided with instructions on how to register for a web server account. When you register you'll be provided with a login ID, a password, and the path to the root folder of your account. Remember, this is simply a folder on the server that you have permission to connect to using an FTP client.
So, for a student named John Doe, the account instructions would say John has an account on www1.esc.edu (the ESC student server) and that the root folder path is: \personalstu\jdoe.
To move a file to the server you must first connect to the server using an FTP client. We recommend the use of a free FTP client called FileZilla. You can download the FileZilla installer for Windows here.
To help you get started with the FileZilla FTP client we've created a narrated tutorial. So first download and install FileZilla, then watch the tutorial. At that point you'll know what you need to know to connect with the server and move your web pages to the server.
But there's one more complication. After completing these steps many students have trouble accessing their web pages. And the problem is almost always the use of an incorrect URL (web page address).
Let's say that John Doe created a file named assignment1.html, and successfully moved that file (page) to the server using FTP. The URL needed to access this file is:
http://www1.esc.edu/personalstu/jdoe/assignment1.html
Note that the URL includes the name of the server, the account folder path, and the name of the file.
A common error is to try to use something like:
http://www1.esc.edu/personalstu/jdoe
This URL refers just the folder, it doesn't include the name of your page that you want to view. The ESC web server requires the use of full URLs, including the name of the page. There is an exception to this rule, but we'll leave that out for now to avoid confusion.
So follow these instructions and watch the video tutorial. You should then be able to move your web pages to the server and access those pages without difficulty.
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