Well, in the last few articles I hopefully explained to you the most important basic terms from web hosting you will need when you start to look for a web host – bandwidth, disk space and operating system. Now we will move to more “generic” terms, like FTP, databases, E-Mail accounts etc. These are not the same by different hosts and most of the time they are not so crucial to your decision. What I want to say by “not so crucial” is, that it does not matter if you have 10FTP accounts or only 1 but it does matter whether you have 10GB of bandwidth or 100GB… . OK, let’s start with the first term I would like to look at, in this article.
The magical FTP account…
While you are searching for a new host you are overwhelmed by different features they offer. Different hosts do offer many kinds of features, but some of them are more important than others and FTP is one of them.
The reason why FTP is so important is, that you will most probably want to upload your web site to your server and to accomplish this you will need a mean to do it and FTP is the solution. Well, I would be more accurate if I would tell you it’s the simplest solution. There are other ways to upload your website online, but more about them later… .
FTP stays for File Transfer Protocol and it allows you to transfer files from one location [your home computer] to your server [your web site folder] or the other way round. It does not matter how much data you want to transfer, but what really matters is you need to stick to the rules! Never try to change the settings of your FTP client to more than 10files at once, else you might get a BAN. Believe me, when I was “young” and “stupid” I tried to set this limit to 20 and after this I was not able to use my FTP account for a day until it was unblocked from my host! My piece of advice 10 [the recommended number] is OK and safe a higher number will most probably get you a BAN, but always check with your host’s Terms of Use… .
One more thing to say about FTP – your data is sent over the network in an un-encrypted form! Everything you send using a FTP client is in clear text so any hacker, or person watching your communication with a packet sniffer is able to see what you are sending, where you are sending it to and MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL – they also see your FTP LOGIN NAME and PASSWORD in clear text!!! Be careful while using FTP on public places – unprotected WiFi hot spots at Airports or Cafes are extremely dangerous places for a FTP update of your web site!
And it’s time to introduce the SFTP
While it’s true, that FTP is a simple way to manage your uploads and downloads it’s also pretty clear, that it is not the safest way to do it. Although not the safest way it is the easiest way. Now I would like to talk about the other site of the story.
In a time when security becomes very important it’s pretty interesting to see, that the majority of web hosts still do not offer their customers the option to use a SFTP access to their web space. SFTP stands for Secure FTP and I think you already get the picture. A SFTP session is encrypted and so is your Login name and Password! It’s really great to have the option to use such an access as it adds more security, but in return you might encounter a slower speed, but who cares if it is secure? I do not… .
There are no other real advantages of SFTP other than security as the majority of things you are able to do with FTP applies to SFTP, too. Lots of time SSH access is connected to your SFTP access, but as I said earlier not many hosts like to allow their users to use SFTP and even less of them allow SSH access.
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I started with FTP / SFTP, because I think that this feature will become decisive for you on your way to find your web host, but there is one more option I need to mention before I will be able to say, that we have covered file uploads and downloads of your web site.
I need to mention, that beside the ability to use a certain amount of FTP / SFTP accounts many hosts do offer you one more option. It’s secure, fast and easy to use. What I am talking here about is something called “Web Site Explorer”, this can be called by different hosts by different names, but the concept behind it is, that you can manage uploads and downloads directly from your Control Panel, thus from your browser!
By using a “Web site Explorer” [it's called so by 1and1] you stay inside your Control Panel and your browser and you can move trough the different folders on your server as you would be using a FTP client. It’s easy to use, because you see everything you have on your server [just like by a FTP session], but you can also use some of the tools made available to you by your host e.g. Unzipping and Zipping of files etc. which may not be supported by all FTP clients.
What about security? Well, if you are using a reliable host your whole session [from log in to your Control panel, trough all your work in your Control panel] is encrypted and at the same time the work you will perform using your Web site Explorer is secure too. There is no way to sniff your password to FTP as you do not enter one!
It’s faster? Well, the speed really depends on your own speed, but FTP could be given a lower speed priority and thus using a “browser” upload could make things faster.
OMG, I have spend so much time thinking about what should I say at the end of this article. I talked about FTP, SFTP and some sort of “Browser based Web site explorer”, but I did not mention any real program you can use to upload your files, although it was not in my plans either, but I decided to mention at least FileZilla as it proved to work great for me and CuteFTP [tried only it's trial version] is another great FTP client, but certainly you will find tons of clients out on the Internet on your own.
I hope you liked this article, but if I missed something you want to know just let me know in the comments area and I might add it. Have a nice day!
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