Long Vacation really make me feel rotten!

After Dealing with some chinese guests, now i’m on my 1 week vacation! I’m happy and feeling lazy to blog! ;p

well, it’s human nature to yielding in pleasure and avoiding pain. By the way, I’ve got one question about FTP Uploading problem yesterday and I would like to share you the guide of FTP and how to upload files easily.

Let’s start this post with a question:

What is FTP and why use FTP upload?

FTP is an abbreviation of File Transfer Protocol. FTP has been awhile in the web replacing HTTP upload system. FTP promise faster and easier uploading than HTTP. In HTTP upload, you will need to upload everything one-by-one. If you have 1000 files, you will need to manually upload it 1000 times.

In FTP, it’s as easy as drag n drop! You choice what’s your files, drag it and drop it at the upload column or the server folder in your web host and let it do it automatically for you.

FTP uploading system is available at almost every modern web host today. It’s outdated if you find out a web host that couldn’t handle FTP uploading. Make sure you do sufficient researches or visit my post about 3 reliable web hosts reviews to find out some good web-host for hosting your blog.

How to upload via FTP?

FTP upload will need 2 party inclusion. It’s:

1. FTP Server, and
2. FTP Client Software

FTP Server is not your problem, you can define if your web host have an installed FTP Server or not by looking at their feature list. There should be a feature called “FTP ACCESS” on the list.

How about Client one?

Basically, there are 2 kind of FTP client software:

1. Web based application, or
2. desktop application

Generally, every web host should have their own web-based FTP Client tool for uploading. But it’s inefficient because you will need to login manually to your web host panel every time if you need to upload something.

Reversely, desktop application like CuteFTP is practically easier when you want to upload something to your blog.

Beside it’s saving time, it also automatically login to you webhost in one click. You can start transfering your files, pictures, movies etc by dragging the files and drop it on the server folder column.

CuteFTP is my favorite tool for FTP uploading. Beside it’s user friendly, it’s quite cheap to own one. Below is the user interface of CuteFTP.

note: left column is your local drives folders, and the right column is your web host server folder.

CuteFTP also can resume broken Upload or Download. It’s a nice feature for people who have a bad internet connection, like in my country.

What kind of File that you will need to FTP Upload?

Blogging will need a lot of tweaking and changing. The most crucial files that usually will need you to upload via FTP are:

1. Plugin – PHP language files
2. Video files – WMA, Quicktime video, Real, etc
3. swf – Flash Animations

Other than these files, Wordpress will have the ‘editor’ to virtually change all of the content of your blog. Like changing your page presentation, you can edit the ’stylesheet’ of your page directly on the ‘theme editor’ under wordpress presentation tab.

To upload a plugin files, below is the guide:

1. Fire up your CuteFTP or other similar software
2. Login to your web host
3. Point to your wordpress installation*) folder
4. find this subfolder: wp-content
5. double click on it, find another folder labeled: plugins
6. go inside that folder
7. Drag your plugin files from your local drives and drop it in the empty space on your server folder.
8. Wait a minutes until the status tell you that you have successfully upload the files, and… Done!

To upload Video or Swf files, try to create a personal folder inside your wordpress installation folder and labeled it properly before uploading. This will prevent you from messing up your server folder.

Hope this post useful. Any further question please email to kopi.support@gmail.com or visit my blog to read some tips and tricks on blogging. I will try my best to help you.

I would create a more detail tutorial on using CuteFTP in my blog. Thanks for the attention, Have a nice Weekend!

This post is a weekly contribution by Ken Xu, the owner and Author of The Tao of Blogging to Wealth. Do Visit his blog to receive regular tips to strengthen your 5 elements in blogging.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 18th, 2007 at 8:37 am and is filed under ZMisc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.