The process by which files are transferred to the Web server is called "FTP" (File Transfer Protocol). There are many ways you can FTP files to your disk space on our Web server. Your preference will most likely depend on your computer system and your abilities.

A free FTP client called Ace is available; for Macs, a program called "Fetch" is commonly used, and for Microsoft Windows systems a program called "WS_FTP" is commonly used. You may choose any FTP client you prefer. You may also use the File Manager and even Command Prompt.

A Few Important Notes

• My Local Directory - I have my HTML documents and images stored in c:\newsite You will see this in some of the images throughout this guide. You will need to change this to whatever the local path is that you have your HTML documents stored on your local computer.
  
  
• My Domain Name - For this guide, I am using the domain name yourdomain.com Again, you will need to change this to reflect your domain name. When connecting via FTP you can use either your domain name or your IP. Both of these are present in your "Welcome to The Great E-scape" letter. You should only use the IP while your domain name is not resolving to our server. Once your domain name is resolving to our server, we recommend that you use your domain name to connect via FTP.
  
  
• About HTML filenames - When you visit a Web site, any Web site such as http://yourdomain.com, http://google.com, or http://yahoo.com the main page that is displayed is called the index page. The index page is basically the first page that you see when you just visit a domain name and do not specify a specific file to view. The server is configured to recognize specific files as the index page. On our servers, you should use index.html or index.htm as the filename for the main index page. This means that whatever HTML file you want to be displayed when you first visit http://yourdomain.com should be saved on your computer as either index.html or index.htm. When this file is uploaded to the server in your public_html directory then the contents of this file will be displayed in a browser when someone visits http://yourdomain.com. Generally, index.html will take precedence over index.htm.
  
  
• How to call images in HTML code.
  
  The image above is a piece of HTML code in an HTML document. Notice the src parameter images/logo.gif. This is a relative path--wherever the HTML document is that contains this code, a Web browser will look for a directory named images directly underneath that location. In the images directory, the browser will look for a file named logo.gif and display that image, if it's there. If the image is not there then a broken image link will be displayed. That a clue to either put the image where it goes or else change the path recorded in the html document to the actual path of the image.
  
  
• The Under Construction Sign
  
  
  
  The "Under Constrution/Welcome to The Great E-scape" is simply a placeholder for your Web site.
  
  
• All of your files and subdirectories go into your www directory. PLEASE DO NOT DELETE ANY DIRECTORIES OR FILES IN YOUR DISK SPACE ON OUR SERVER. The files pertaining to your Web site that you design should be uploaded to your www directory and should be the only files you ever replace.
  
  
• It is also important for you to transfer files in the appropriate mode. Perl scripts and HTML files are ASCII files, along with many others. If you use a plain text editor to work with a file, it's an ASCII file. It's not terribly important to transfer HTML files in ASCII mode, but it is important for Perl scripts.
  
  
• GIFs and JPEGs, as well as audio and video files, are binary files. They must be uploaded in binary mode or they will be corrupted. Files that look like garbage in a plain text editor and require a more advanced program to edit are not ASCII files, and need to be transferred in binary mode.
  
  

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