The situation is as follows: You are new at web hosting. You just bought your first hosting package ever and you want to start your online presence as soon as possible. You do have your site ready. It does not mater, for now, who designed it for you, it is only important you do have your site ready in some kind of format and the thing you want to do is to quickly upload your web site and get started 
Your main concern is: How do you get the page online – understand -> how do you get it online or upload it to the server. There are numerous methods to achieve this and the method you will be able to use differs from host to host. The protocol does not differ as most of the time it will be FTP, but the different options – applications you can use to make use of FTP – differs. I would like to make a small and short explenation of the possible ways some host may offer. I can tell you, that some hosts may give you the option to use 3 different ways to upload your data and some will give you only one or two options….
Using an FTP client
A FTP client is a piece of software build to upload and download data from [to] the server. FTP stands for file transfer protocol and applications like Filezilla, Cute FTP, Smart FTP or Wise FTP use this protocol to make you able to manage data on your server. One important thing to know about FTP is that everything you send trough this protocol is uploaded/downloaded as let’s call it “plain text”. This means what ever you send during a FTP session is easily readable by anyone who sniffs on your network. Your FTP password and Login name are easily readable by anyone. This is the biggest drawback of FTP. On the other hand FTP is a quick way to upload/download thigs from/to the server, but I have to say that the speed depends on your local speed as well.
Most of the hosts out there offer this option as a “default” way to manage data on your web server. You just login to your control panel and create a FTP account. The FTP account consists of a Login name and password combination. I would suggest you should use a strong FTP password [10+ characters long] although it is not encrypted during sessions, but if there is no one sniffing on your network it gives you the added confidence, that if someone will try to log into your web space using your FTP credentials he will not have an easy job.
I could talk about the protocol and the ports it uses, but this is not important for any beginner and you can still take a look at wikipedia or other sites dedicated to protocols. The one thing I want to tell you, and I consider it to be a very important thing is that there is another FTP protocol called SFTP. This stand for Secure FTP and I would recommend you to use this one if your hosting company offers such an option. It encrypts your communication with your server and everything you send is encrypted and thus not readable by possible sniffers, but you pay for this added value of security by a little slower upload/download speed as data need to be encrypted/decrypted.
Browser based webspace explorers
Besides the ability to use a FTP client some hosts might give you the option to use a kind of “Web Space explorer”. You do not need any special software to have the ability to upload or download data to your web space, because you will use your browser to perform these actions. It does not depend on what browser you use, because this feature should work with all of them: Firefox, Opera, IE, Safari or Chrome etc. all work with this method.
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The one good thing about this method is that the whole session is most of the time encrypted. It is like you would be using SFTP You never leave your browser window and you see your whole web space as you would be using an ordinary FTP client. I found out, that some times it is faster to upload files using this option, than using an FTP client, but it may differ from host to host and your own connection.
Major control panels do offer this option – I know for sure that 1and1′s panel supports this option and the panel used by most hosts “the Cpanel” supports this as well and I like both of them 
Console – SSH
If you are a Linux user some hosts might give you the ability to manage your web space using SSH and your console to upload/download files… I have never used this option until now so I can not tell you much about it. You should look around the Internet to find something more about this. You can leave a comment if you used this method and give us some information about it.
The Conclusion:
There might be some other options I did not discussed here, but it is not because I have decided not to include them , but they are maybe not widely used or specific for a certain host, or I do know about them so far In either way I would suggest to you to rather use a secured connection while communicating with your web space [SFTP or Web based space explorer"] and limit the use of FTP protocol to trusted environments/networks. I have to say, that all FTP clients offer you the option to use SFTP as the connection protocol.
One good thing to remember is to never to try to upload more than 10 files at one time [I mean never try more than 10 simultaneous transfers] as some hosts might suspend your account and you will need to contact the support to clear this up. It happened to me once and form this time I know 10 is good and 18 is bad
I intentionally did not discuss any specific FTP programs as this should be the place for you to choose the one you like and know how to work with it, or you can make the decision to use the provided Web space explorer option…. A good source to find some FTP software are download.com or sourceforge.net .
Feel free to leave any comment in the comment area under the article and I am looking forward to answer your questions. Do not forget to subscribe to Icethunder’s RSS Feed to get the hottest article right into your Feed Reader. You can follow Icethunder on Twitter, too Have a nice day!
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