Setting Up FTP on Your Hosting Account
Many Web hosts today offer FTP as part of their hosting packages, so just confirm that your hosting provider makes FTP available to you for your account. In Book II, Chapter 1, we mention the hosting account management interface called cPanel. cPanel is by far the most popular hosting account management software used by hosts on the Web, eclipsing other popular tools, such as Plesk and NetAdmin.
In this chapter, we use cPanel as the example. If your hosting provider gives you a different interface to work with, the concepts are still the same, but you'll need to refer to your hosting provider for the specifics to adapt these directions to your specific environment.
Mostly, the FTP for your hosting account is set up automatically. Figure 2-1 shows you the FTP Accounts page in cPanel — follow these steps to get to this page and set up your FTP account:
- Log in to the cPanel for your hosting account.
Typically, you'll browse to http://yourdomain.com/cpanel to bring up the login screen for your cPanel. Enter your specific hosting account username and password in the login fields and click OK.
- Browse to the FTP Accounts page.
Click the FTP Accounts link or icon in your cPanel to open the FTP Accounts page shown in Figure 2-1.
- View the existing FTP account.
If your hosting provider automatically sets you up with an FTP account, then you will see it listed in the Account Management section. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the default FTP account uses the same username and password combination as your hosting account or the login information you used to log in to your cPanel in Step 1.
Figure 2-1: The FTP Accounts page within cPanel.
If the FTP Accounts page doesn't display a default FTP user in the Account Management section, you can create one easily in the Add FTP Account section:
- Type your desired username in the Login field.
This creates the username of username@yourdomain.com (where username is the desired username you typed and yourdomain.com is your specific domain name).
- Type your desired password in the Password field.
You can choose to type in your own password or click the Password Generator button to have the server generate a secure password for you. Retype the password in the Password (Again) field to validate.
- Check the Strength indicator.
The server tells you if your password is Very Weak, Weak, Good, Strong, or Very Strong (refer to Figure 2-1). You want to have a very strong password for your FTP account that's very hard for hackers and malicious Internet users to guess and crack.
- Type the directory access for this FTP user.
Leaving this field blank gives this new FTP user access to the root level of your hosting account, which, as the site owner, you want. So leave this field blank. (In the future, if you set up FTP accounts for other users, you can lock down their access to your hosting directory by indicating which directory the FTP user has access to.)
- Indicate the space limitations in the Quota field.
Because you're the site owner, leave the radio button selection to Unlimited. (In the future, if you add a new FTP user, you can limit the amount of space, in Megabytes (MB) by selecting the radio button to the left of the text field and typing the numeric amount in the text box; for example: 50MB.)
- Click the Create FTP Account button.
A new screen with a message that the account was created successfully appears. Additionally, the settings for this new FTP account appear, which you should copy and paste into a blank text editor window (like Notepad for PC, or TextMate for Mac users). The settings for the FTP account are the connection details you need to connect to your Web server via FTP.
- Set the following settings:
FTP Username, Password, and FTP Server are specific to your domain and the information you entered in the preceding steps.
- FTP Username: username@yourdomain.com
- Password: yourpassword
- FTP Server: ftp.yourdomain.com
- FTP Server Port: 21
- Quota: Unlimited MB
Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, the FTP Server Port will be 21 — be sure to double-check your FTP settings to make sure that this is the case.
At any time, you can revisit the FTP Accounts page to delete the FTP accounts you've created, change the quota, change the password, and find the connection details specific to that account.