Using FTP to Post Files to the Web Server

General Information
Policies and Guidelines
File Naming
How to Post
Special Issues with FTP
Determining Your URL
Limit Access to Pages
Announce Your Pages
Maintaining Your Pages
FAQ

Creating Web Pages--Faculty

Special Issues with FTP

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) offers an easy and convient way to publish files to the College's web server, whether you are on or off campus. However, we recommend FTP only to those off campus due to some problems with file names that FTP can create. These issues are the same, whether you post with FTP through Dreamweaver (as we suggest) or with any FTP client you choose. (e.g. FTP Explorer, Fetch).

Case Sensitive File Names

The College web server is a UNIX-based system, and like all unix-based systems, it is case sensitive. However, the Macintosh and Windows operating systems are not case sensitive. Because of complications caused by this issue, you need to be very careful about capitalization of file names for your web pages.

We recommend only using lower case alphanumeric characters (a-z, 1-9, the underscore (_) and the period (.) symbol), to avoid problems that can arise, especially when using FTP to post your files to the web server. See the section on File Naming for more information.

Another FTP issue: ASCII vs BINARY

The FTP protocol supports two transfer types, ASCII and BINARY. Different files must be transferred with the appropriate type set. Using the incorrect type may result in unusable files.

Dreamweaver's FTP client will automatically select the correct file transfer method. However, other FTP clients, such as FTP Explorer, require you to set the transfer method to either ASCII or Binary.

If you are using an FTP client which will not set the transfer type automatically, you should be aware of this general rule:

• Any text file (.txt, .html, etc.) must be transferred in ASCII mode
• Any other type of file (including pictures, sounds, etc.) must be transferred in BINARY mode