» How-to's and Tutorials » Uploading Your Website

Once you have Web Hosting, the first thing to do is upload your website to the server. After all of your HTML, images, and scripts have been stored in the correct spot on the server, your site will be visible to the rest of the world.

To upload your files to the server we will use File Transfer Protocol, otherwise known as FTP. FTP is a method for transferring files between two computers - in this case, your PC and the server. To use FTP you are going to need an FTP client. An FTP client is a program that facilitates file transfers between the local file system (your hard drive) and the server.

Using Windows Explorer as an FTP Client

Lucky for us, Windows has an FTP client built into Explorer that will do just fine for this tutorial. Some readers may like to use a third-party FTP client instead. If you find Explorer to be limiting, we suggest you check out some third-party FTP clients, such as: WS_FTP and CuteFTP.

Connecting to the FTP Server

To connect to the FTP server, launch Explorer. Those of you running Windows XP should go: Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Windows Explorer. Once Explorer has started, click on the address bar and enter the following:

ftp://username@yourdomain.com

That is: ftp://, followed by your username, followed by an @ symbol, then your domain name. When you press Enter, Explorer will establish a connection to the FTP server and ask you to provide a password. Once you are logged in, you should see the following:

Open the 'www' folder. This folder holds all the files for www.yourdomain.com. In here you will see five more folders: data, logs, ssl, users, and web. Anything you place in the 'web' folder will be publicly accessible at http://www.yourdomain.com. This is where you should store all of your HTML, images, scripts, etc.

Copying Files to the FTP Server

From this point on, you can copy files to and from the FTP server just like you would on your hard drive with Explorer. Using the left navigation pane, locate the folder on your PC where you have your website stored. Select the files you want to copy and drag them into the 'web' folder on the left. This will begin copying files from your PC to the server.

Try it Out

After you have copied over your index.html page, open a web browser and visit your domain. If you placed everything in the correct location, you should see your index page. Easy, huh?