Roxy

I know some people here on the boards are not huge fans of this FTP program, but I've been using it for about 2-3 years now and absolutely am loyal to it. While there is one down side to it, they "force" you into upgrading the program when a new release comes out, if you don't your not able to open the program up. Although this can get annoying at times, in reality, its a great idea since you're keeping the program up-to-date and not using with old software. And with all that said, below I have a written an easy to follow how-to on using SmartFTP. Little by, little, I will add more sections to this thread, on how to use more features of SmartFTP.

Once you open, SmartFTP, you will notice that it is very bare, except for the panel in the right side, (or it could be taking up the whole screen) with showing you files that are on your computer. If by chance you do not see this, in the right hand corner where the menu is, there is a folder icon with a magnifying glass on it. Hover over it and make sure it says New Local Browser, if so click it and this panel will show up.



Now to login into your server. At the top you will notice starting at the far left there are three input boxes. One says "address", the other "login", and the last "password". Getting your information from your Welcome email, your FTP details should look something like this:

address: ftp.yourdomainname.com
login: username OR usernameyourdomainname.com
password: the password given to you

With these details written into their respected fields, press the ENTER button on your keyboard.



Now you should see two panels, on the left side, will be the files and folders within your server and on the right side will be the files and folders from your computer. If you can see both of these, then all is well so far.



Now I'm sure you want to know how to transfer your files from your computer onto your server, no problem, we will cover that now. Be sure to have clicked to open the public_html folder within your server panel first before starting to transfer files, if not in this folder, they will not show up when you go to your domain name's URL. Once inside this folder, we can begin to transfer over all the files. There are two ways in doing this, the first way by clicking on the file or folder's name and then click the little left pointing arrow button in the middle of the two panels.



The second was is by dragging and dropping. I use this way more often as it is quicker.



When by chance, you have edited a certain file, image, or folder and want to upload it, you can easily do so by dragging it over, a pop-up window will appear telling you that a file with that name already exist. You have the option to overwrite it, or abort the transfer, of course if you are updating the file, then it is all right to overwrite it.



Be sure to always be looking down at your "logs" in case you run into an error, it will show up there, if not then sometimes problems will arise where the transfer did not go completely through and you do not see the changes you made, or the files you uploaded, well the logs are there to help with that, if such a situation were to occur.



Enabling Passive Mode

Usually this feature is automatically enabled when you first start the program, but if by chance it is not, here is a simple way to enable it. Once your SmartFTP is open and you have already logged into your server, you will notice the menu that goes across the top of that panel. At the very right of JUST your server's panel, you will see a few buttons the first one says ASCII, second 10101, third Auto, and the last PASV (Passive). These modes represent the way the file is sent/transfered into your server. Most if not all files usually need to be in passive mode to work. Well clicking on that PASV button will automatically enable it, also makes sure to have the AUTO button also enabled, just in case.



Well that's all for now. Good luck!

__________________
Roxanne


Urban Roxy -Personal Blog
SH63 - the best darn shared server!