Yay, nice sunday morning. Sun is shining…..oh no…wait….it´s lashing out here in Germany right now. Been out taking my dog for it´s morning walk and now i am sitting in front of my laptop and because of the weather i got some time to start the day off with a tutorial on how to setup Filezilla for use with your afreewebhost.com account.
Recently i have been writing a lot about uploading scripts to webservers and how you would need a FTP client for that. A FTP client is pretty much just a GUI for what you can do with a shell or DOS command prompt. At least as far as it´s basic functionality is concerned. There are certain things that the DOS prompt doesn´t allow but the FTP client does. In a DOS prompt you would see something similar like this:
Bet to the most of you it looks all cryptic and stuff, but that is a very basic way of FTP´ing when there is no FTP client at hand. Though nowadays most of us have become somewhat lazy and we like to click stuff rather than typing commands with a bazillion of parameters, so a couple of people had the idea to wrap all that typing you have to do into a nice program, that looks fancy and in general makes FTP´ing a lot more convenient.
More and more people got that idea and now there is a million FTP clients to choose from. I can´t cover them all so i will be covering what i think are the most common ones in use for Windows, as i suppose the biggest part of the people reading this are running Windows. Having said that i think it´s time to start setting up your very first FTP client. I chose Filezilla which is a fairly simple client and doesn´t cost you a penny,dime,cent…whatever the currency iny our country is. I´ll walk you through from download to installation and basic configuration of Filezilla, which is a piece of cake as you will see once finished.
Downloading FilezillaYes, obviously we have to download Filezilla first so log on to their FTP server and……erm…hehehe…right. No FTP client set up yet i guess ?? Ok, let´s go for the HTTP download version then. Just visit
Register or
Loginhttp://filezilla-project.org/
to download the latest version which as of this moment 3.1.1.1. The Download Page will let you download Filezilla for a variety of Operating Systems, we for now focus on the Windows Version, so go download the FileZilla_3.1.1.1_win32-setup.exe and save it somewhere on your PC. Done downloading, now let´s install it.
Installing FilezillaWhen you doubleclick the freshly downloaded copy of Filezilla Windows might get all smart on you and ask if you´re really sure about running this software.
If there is one thing in the world i don´t like it´s an Operating System asking me whether i want to run a particular software or now. If i wouldn´t want to run it i wouldn´t have started it in the first place, you hear me Windows
?
Ok, confirm that Dialogue by clicking on “Run” and it will open the first screen of the Filezilla installation, which couldn´t be more boring. It´s the usual license agreement that regulates what can and what shouldn´t be done with and to this software. So either read it or skip it and proceed to the next step by clicking I Agree. This will let you choose whether Filezilla will be installed for every user on your PC or just for you.
This is up to you, depending on how you use your computer. So choose whatever you see fit. If you go for the Anyone option a program group and desktop icon will be installed in every user profile on your PC. Once you made your decision click on Next and you are asked what components to install. There are a few choices to be made on that screen
Filezilla Client can´t be deselected for obvious reasons. Rest of the options again is up to you. They are all pretty self-explanatory i think. What might make you wonder is the term “Shell Extensions“. Activating this option will add some Filezilla Options to the Context-Menus you get when you right-click a file, that´s pretty much it. It is not vital, nor necessary but it WILL clog up your Context-Menus depending on what other programs you have installed that add extensions to the Shell / Context-Menus.
When done choosing what to install and what not to install click Next which will take you to the, go figure.., next screen of the installation. This is, beside the one with the License, probably the easiest one to complete. All you are asked here is to provide a path where to install Filezilla. Now you can leave the default one or choose any other path you want to install Filezilla in, again all up to you.
Path chosen ? Good, click Next and you will see a screen asking to choose a Start Menu Folder. This typically would be FileZilla FTP Client by default but you can either change that or select any other Program Group you already have and think Filezilla fits in there.
Now we see the magical Install button at the bottom of this Window and once chosen a Program Group let´s left-click the Install button and see what happens. A new screen appears with a green bar that magically moves from left to right for about a second or two and then presents you with this screen
First Launch and Configuration of FilezillaFilezilla´s main window might look a bit scary at first. There is loads of windows, some of them blank, some of them not quite so blank and containing some information. Here is a screenshot with a few sections highlighted that hopefully gives you a basic idea on what those windows do and contain.
Not too difficult, is it ? If you got any question so far don´t hesitate to either post to the Support Forum or leave a comment here. Now, we got Filezilla up and running and are ready to transfer the first few files. To get started we need to create a connection to your FTP server…
Configuring Filezilla for afreewebhost.comThis actually is easier as you might think. All we need for that are your FTP account details, so get them ready. In case you haven´t set up a FTP account yet you need to do that first, otherwise you wouldn´t have any details to fill in, would you ?
Setting up a FTP account isn´t that hard, and if you haven´t got a clue as how to do that there is also a How-To that should help you out. Just visit this link for the How-To on setting up a FTP account. Assuming you got your FTP details at hand now we can start configuring Filezilla. Almost each FTP client has something like a “Site Manager” and so does Filezilla. To show the Site Manager you can either press
CTRL + S
or do it the oldschool way and click File in the Menu Bar of Filezilla and then select Site Manager. Both ways end up with the same screen which is this
Yay, look at it…all clean. Time to take away it´s virginity and create the first FTP connection. Left-click on New Site and the screen will change. Well, not really change but the options on the right side will become active and waiting for user input.
There are a few things to fill in now and some options to change. Let´s start with the host
Host: obviously needs to be changed / replaced to reflect your FTP server details
Port: Set this to 21 which is the standard port.
Servertype: Yes, leave that at FTP - File Transfer Protocol
Logon Type: Needs to be changed to Normal
User: Obviously your FTP useraccount name
Password: Hardly think i have to say something about this, do i ?
Comments: Disregard this…unnecessary
Ok, you filled in everything you need, now it´s time to test if you didn´t screw up at your end. Left-click the Connect button and see whether the FTP connection is working or not. Ideally, Filezilla will now connect to the FTP server and it´s main window will show something like this
Cool, seems to have worked out alright, connection has been made successfully. Now it´s up to you to transfer files and directories from A to B and vice versa. This should have given you a basic idea on how to set up Filezilla for your afreewebhost.com account. If there are any questions, comments, suggestions or anything else you would like to have added or know about please either leave a comment here or post a topic in the Support Forum
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