John Cletheroe's
PC and Internet Hints

Web Page Creation Hints and Resources - Uploading Web Site Files From Your PC to the Server

Programs such as Ipswitch's WS_FTP can be used to upload your completed and checked web pages and graphics files to your server.

WS_FTP configuration for a Windows 95 PC's uploading to Virgin Net's Freespace.

WS_FTP can also be used to delete files from your web space area on the server and to create and delete directories within your web space area on the server. Remember that in some cases directory names (and file names) must be in lowercase.

If you have a large site then you may only want to upload the files which have changed since the last upload. You can use Window's Find facility to list such files, or write a program to read the DIR.TXT file described above, checking each file's time and date stamp. You could also use the Archive (A) file attribute flag to detect changed files, but beware of that flag being changed by other programs, especially backup routines.

If you have a significant number of pages on your site then you may need to maintain a log of when each pages was uploaded to the server.

Having uploaded your pages, don't forget to check that they work correctly when accessed via the Internet.

Some ISP's have a different name for the server to which web space files should be uploaded than that used to normally access the pages. For example, with Virgin Net you must upload pages with FTP to upload.virgin.net/joe.bloggs, but pages are normally accessed over the Internet by web browsers from http://freespace.virgin.net/joe.bloggs (where joe.bloggs is your user name). Files will automatically be copied from upload.virgin.net to freespace.virgin.net without you having to do anything.

With some ISP's, including Virgin Net, it is necessary to use lowercase for all your file names and directory names, including file names and directory names in the hypertext links in the pages themselves. I think that this might have something to do with the Unix operating system which many servers use.

To be totally safe, it is best to stick to the rules applicable in DOS and Windows V3.1 when choosing file names and directory names (folder names):

No more than eight characters in a filename or directory name.
No more than three characters in the extension. Use an extension of HTM for HTML files, GIF for GIF image files and JPG for JPG image files.
Only use digits (0 to 9), letters (a to z) and the underline character (_) in file and directory names. Don't include any spaces or other punctuation marks in file and directory names.

Some web servers and browsers may accept a wider range of filenames than those suggested by these rules, but by following the above you can be certain that your file and directory names will be ok everywhere.

Make the filename of the "home page" or main menu page in each directory index.htm. All modern web browsers will automatically load a file called index.htm if the user only specifies the server name or the server name and a directory path and omits a filename. (To be pedantic, I believe there are several other possible file names for which the same applies.)

As with all the other pages on this personal web site, all the information on this page is solely the opinion of the author, who has no connection whatsoever with any of the companies and organisations mentioned other than as an actual or potential customer.

Web Page Creation Hints and Resources

PC and Internet Hints

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Most recently modified 25-Mar-01