Web Site Basics

Building a Website

3. A way to get it up there

What is FTP?

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is the method that is used to transfer filesfrom your computer to your web-space. If you can imagine that web-space is like anextra drive on your computer, then FTP is the equivalent of saving a file onyour hard-disk, but instead you save it on your web-space

FTP was first invented in the UNIX world in order to move files from onecomputer to another. It consists of two pieces of software. One to send theinformation from a computer and another one to receive the information. It is now widely used to transferfiles from a computer to web-space using an internet connection

Although it is not so necessary to understand at this point exactly how it does work,uploading a file can be understood as doing the exact opposite of downloading a file from theinternet. So instead of downloading a file from the internet to your computer,it uploads a file from your computer to the internet