Website Hosting
FTP Settings and Website Information
FTP Software
To upload files to your website, you need an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program such as one of the following:
- Windows:
- Windows Explorer (included with Windows)
- WinSCP
- FileZilla
- WS_FTP Professional
- FTP Voyager
- CuteFTP
- Apple / Mac:
FTP Settings / website info
Domain Hosting | Personal Website | |
---|---|---|
Website address: | http://www.example.com http://example.com |
http://www.nettally.com/username http://nettally.com/username |
FTP Server (host name): | ftp.example.com | ftp.nettally.com |
FTP login (username): | (whatever you had us configure on the web/FTP server) | |
FTP password: | (whatever you had us configure on the web/FTP server) | |
Default document search order: (see the Default documents section below) |
default.htm (HTML) default.asp (ASP - Active Server Pages) index.htm (HTML) index.html (HTML) default.aspx (ASP.NET) index.cfm (ColdFusion) |
Domain hosting:example.com represents the domain that you have registered (e.g. whatever.com, something.net, organization.org, etc.).
Personal websites:username (login) typically represents the first part of your email address. ColdFusion is not available to personal websites.
FTP Tips / Suggestions
- After logging in, you will automatically be placed in your directory, so you should not set your FTP program to automatically log into some specified starting directory (by default, this is usually left blank).
- Be sure to have your file transfer mode set to automatic or binary (sometimes called image).
- We recommend DISabling transfer logging if your FTP software stores the logs on the web server. This is sometimes enabled by default in the FTP software.
Default documents
Generally speaking, there should be a "default document" (see above) within any directory structure in your site that has content. This "default document" is the "main" file for any given directory and normally contains information about that section of the site and links to various files within that section.
If someone types in http://www.example.com/myvacation/ (without specifying a file in the "myvacation" directory), the default document (if it exists) is the file that will be displayed--otherwise, an error message is displayed.
If you name your default document "default.htm" and place it in the main directory of your site, then the following two addresses would display the same content:
http://www.example.com/
http://www.example.com/default.htm
Likewise, the following two URLs are equivalent to each other:
http://www.example.com/somesubdirectory/
http://www.example.com/somesubdirectory/default.htm
Because default documents are displayed automatically by the web server when a visitor does not specify a specific file name, you should never specify the default document's file name in any of your code.
You should never have multiple default documents in the same directory (e.g. "index.html" AND "default.htm" at the same time).
You can add any file name to the existing default document list by editing or creating the "web.config" file in the root (top-most) directory in your website. The following example "web.config" file adds "index.asp" to the existing list of default documents:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<defaultDocument>
<files>
<add value="index.asp" />
</files>
</defaultDocument>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>
See the following for more information:
Default Document <defaultDocument>
Default Document Files <Files>