The following details how to setup WS_FTP LE to login and upload files to a HostRocket account via an FTP connection. WS_FTP which is a product of Ipswitch, Inc is one of many popular freeware and/or shareware FTP clients. The Limited Edition (LE) version of WS_FTP is available completely free of charge for non-commercial home use and can be downloaded from ftpplanet.com here.

Setting up your FTP login

After downloading and installing WS_FTP LE when you first start the program you will see the following screen:

Use the following steps to create an FTP login for your HostRocket account:

1- In the Profile Name field enter a recognizable name for your HostRocket account (your domain name, "My HostRocket Account" etc)

2- In the Host Name/Address field enter either your domain name
or the IP address associated with your HostRocket account

3- Pull down the Host Type menu and select either "Automatic Detect" or "UNIX (standard)"

4- In the User ID field when creating your primary FTP login enter your HostRocket user name (in most cases the first seven characters of your domain name). When setting up an FTP subaccount one would use the user name they assigned to the FTP account as if it were an email address, adding @domain.com (user@domain.com)

5- In the Password field enter your HostRocket account password if setting up the primary account, in the case of secondary FTP accounts enter the password assigned to the FTP subaccount when setting it up in your Control Panel

6- Check the Save Pwd box if you wish to store your password in the program in order to avoid having to enter it during each FTP session.

7- Click the OK button to complete the process and initiate your first FTP connection

Using WS_FTP LE

After setting up your FTP account profile and clicking OK to connect you will then see the main WS_FTP LE window:

Note that the WS_FTP LE interface is designed to offer a "split screen" type effect, with the left hand window displaying the local system (the contents of your PC's hard drive) and the right hand window showing the contents of the remote site (in this case your web hosting account on HostRocket's servers). Two buttons identified with right/left arrows sit between the two windows to initiate the transfer of selected files (the [>] button uploads from your PC to the web, the [<] downloads from the web to your PC)

8- In the Local System window on the left you will want to browse to the folder on your hard drive in which you have stored the files you wish to upload to your HostRocket account. To navigate within WS_FTP LE click the green "up arrow" at the top of the window to move to higher level directories and click on the folder icons to navigate downward in the directory tree. To navigate to different hard drive or partition letter scroll down and click on the drive letters listed at the bottom.

9- Once you have successfully made your FTP connection the Remote Site window on the right will show the top level of your web hosting account, aka your user folder. On our servers this directory will have the same name as your HostRocket user name, however as the root directory of your account WS_FTP LE will identify it as /

10- In the Remote Site window you should see among others a folder named public_html. This is your web accessible folder; all files which you wish to have accessible from the Internet via a web browser must be uploaded to the public_html directory. The level you are on now (/) would only be used to store files which you wish to remain private and inaccessible from the web, before uploading any files which are part of your website be sure to double-click on the public_html folder.

After double-clicking on the public_html folder in the Remote Site window you should see /public_html identified as your current location as is shown in the following illustration:

At this point you are ready to start uploading the files which make up your web site.

Uploading Files Using WS_FTP LE

11- Select the file(s) you wish to upload in the Remote System window on the left. Multiple files can be selected for uploading by either using your mouse pointer to select or "box in" a group of files as one would in Windows Explorer or by highlighting/selecting the topmost file on the list and then pressing and holding the SHIFT key while clicking on the last file at the bottom of the list.

12- To initiate the actual transfer (upload) of the selected files click the [>] button in the center of the screen. Note that when uploading individual files another option would be to just double-click on the file itself which will initiate a transfer of that file alone.

If this is your first time creating and uploading a web page to upload your first test page after creating a simple index file (which can be just a simple plain text file containing the words "Under construction" or "Coming soon" created in NotePad and saved using the file name index.html) navigate to the index.html file in the Local System window and either double-click on it or highlight/select it and click the [>] button. A copy of the index.html file should now appear in the Remote Site window. If it does you have successfully uploaded your first page and it should be displayed when you enter your domain name (or your test URL if your domain has yet to resolve to your HostRocket account) into a browser.

Additional Things To Note

13- At the bottom under the two windows you will see radio buttons labeled ASCII and Binary plus a check box labeled Auto. These control whether the file is uploaded in ASCII (plain text) or binary mode. ASCII mode is appropriate for all text based files (.htm .html .php .txt .pl .cgi etc) while binary mode would be used for binary files such as graphics and executable programs (.gif .jpg .exe .zip etc). Selecting the correct mode can be critical, for example when uploading  Perl scripts (.pl or .cgi files) ASCII mode must be used and inadvertently uploading in binary mode will result in a damaged and unusable script.

The Auto check box is part of a user-customizable option in WS_FTP LE in which one can click the Options button > choose the Extensions tab and specify all file type extensions which they want to always have uploaded using ASCII mode. When properly configured the Auto setting will allow you to upload the contents of a folder containing both ASCII and binary files in one shot with all files being uploaded using the proper transfer mode automatically.

14- Next to each of the main windows you will find a column of options buttons. Most of the buttons are self-explanatory (Rename, Delete, etc). Just below the MkDir (Make Directory) button on each side you will note a small "blank button" text entry field. This is referred to as the "File Mask" box. While there are other uses for this (ex: if you type *.html in this box and tap ENTER only .html files will be displayed with all other files "masked" or hidden from view) one key thing to mention here is that if one types -la into the File Mask field on the Remote Site side (see 14 in the illustration and above) files beginning with a . such as .htaccess which are hidden by default will be displayed.

Changing CHMOD Permissions Using WS_FTP LE

15- WS_FTP LE also supports changing file permissions, which is something which can come in very handy when uploading Perl scripts. The permissions on Perl scripts (.pl and .cgi files) commonly need to be changed in order to make the scripts executable. To change permissions in WS_FTP LE, owner would right-click on the file they wish to change the permissions for and click chmod (UNIX). This will bring up the Remote File Permissions dialog shown on the right below:

The Remote File Permissions illustration above with the 7 of 9 boxes checked reflects what would be referred to as CHMOD 755, which is the common setting recommended for most Perl scripts. In some cases one may have to modify the permissions of related files to 777 in order to allow the script the ability to write to the file, this would be done by checking all 9 boxes. Note that for security reasons CHMOD 777 should always be used sparingly and only when it's absolutely necessary for a script to function.

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