Coders' Guidebook
Tutorials Dictionary

How to register your website and upload web pages using File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

This tutorial will cover how to publish your website on the internet. To publish a website, you will first need to register your website's domain name. A domain name is the address of your website on the internet. For example, the domain name for this website is "www.codersguidebook.com". The best domain names are often short, easy to spell and memorable. Your choice should also indicate what kind of content can be found on the website. Once you have decided on a domain name, you should check whether it is available on a domain name registrar such as www.name.com.

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In addition to finding an available domain name, you will also need to register with a hosting service. Hosting providers store your website's files and make them available over the internet. Without a hosting provider, people visiting your website would not see any content. One of the most popular hosting providers is GoDaddy. They often have good deals available for new websites. To best follow along with the tutorials on this website, we recommend choosing a hosting provider that offers cPanel. cPanel is a web hosting control panel that helps you manage administrative components of a website including email, databases, visitor statistics and more.

Setting up the File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a method for your computer and web server to communicate with one another. You can use FTP to upload webpages and other files to the server and so make them available over the internet.

Before you can use FTP, you must first create an FTP account with your hosting provider. If your hosting provider offers access to cPanel, then your view of cPanel will depend on which theme you are using. The screenshots for this tutorial are from cPanel in Paper Lantern mode. If your cPanel layout does not look like the screenshots below then you may need to switch your theme from x10Hosting Basic to Paper Lantern theme by clicking the 'Switch Theme' button.

Once in Paper Lantern mode, navigate to the section named 'FTP Accounts'.

Create an FTP account by filling in the Log In and Password sections of the Add FTP Account form. Be sure to keep a note of your Log In and Password details someplace safe because we will need them later. You must replace the text which auto-fills the Directory section with public_html because only files found in this folder will be loaded when people visit your website. The public_html folder (also known as the root directory) is where you will store your 'index.html' homepage.

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Once you have created an FTP account you next need to download an FTP application. FTP applications handle your files and upload them to the server. FileZilla is one of the most popular FTP applications and can be downloaded for free here.

Install FileZilla (or the FTP client of your choice) and configure it to log in to your FTP account. In FileZilla, this is done by clicking File > Site Manager > New Site. In the dialogue box on the right-hand side of the Site Manager window, fill in the details as follows:

In the Site Manager window, you can now connect to the server using your FTP login by pressing 'Connect'. For future reference though, you can also log in by selecting your login from the 'Open the Site Manager' dropdown menu.

Uploading files

Once you have connected to the server you can begin uploading files to your website. In FileZilla, you will find two panels of files. The left-hand side shows the files on your computer and the right-hand side shows the files on the server.

To upload files to the server, simply drag and drop them from the computer panel over to the server panel. You should receive a notification when the files have finished uploading and they will also now be visible on the server panel.

And that's it! Providing you have uploaded your files to the public_html folder we set as the directory earlier then your website will now be available for all to see.

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