KB / Getting Started / Building your website / How do I use FTP to upload my site?
From DreamHost
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a very popular standard with which to upload and download files to and from computer to computer. Like most web hosts, we provide access to our servers via FTP.
Which FTP Client Should I Use?
For the Macintosh, you will probably want to look into one of the following FTP clients, which we recommend:
NetFinder http://www.ozemail.com.au/~pli/netfinder/sw_and_updts.html
Fetch http://fetchsoftworks.com/
Interarchy http://www.interarchy.com/main/
For Microsoft Windows-based PCs, you will find that the following two programs are most popular, and are well supported with Dreamhost's servers (also note that most web-design software like Dreamweaver have FTP built-in):
WS_FTP http://www.csra.net/junodj/ws_ftp32.htm
CuteFTP http://www.cuteftp.com/Cuteftp/
There are dozens of FTP clients available for just about every operating system out there. For Linux, your command line FTP program is probably as good as any graphical client (then again, if you run Linux, you probably knew that). You can even find FTP clients for your PalmPilot, Mac OS X Server, and all sorts of other operating systems. If you need help finding one, let us know.
Once you have downloaded an FTP program, we suggest that you read the documentation in order to become familiar with its capabilities. However, as most FTP clients function pretty much in the same fashion, you should find these instructions useful in getting started.
The Proper Settings
Once you have your FTP program open and running, you will still need to point it somewhere to upload files. You'll need to enter the 'hostname' of your site (often called a domain name or server, depending on the FTP program). For example, if your site is viewable at 'www.dreamhostrules.com', the hostname would simply be 'dreamhostrules.com'.
If your domain hasn't been set up yet (not registered or not transferred to DreamHost) you can still upload your site directly to your machine name temporarily. You should have gotten the name of your machine in a welcome email, it will be of the form machine.dreamhost.com.
Next, you'll probably be prompted for a username and password. These values should have been given to you when you first signed up. If you have any questions as to what they are, please feel free to ask.
You may also be asked for a starting directory. This tells the FTP client where to put you within the directory structure of your account. Almost all web sites need to go into a directory named after the domain they are hosted under, not in the root of the account! Although putting your files directly into the root directory will not break anything, this will certainly prevent you from seeing your site until you move them. For the starting directory setting, you should put in a value such as /dreamhostrules.com/ (assuming that was your domain name).
