FTP

From E-commerce knowledge - Shopfitter

[edit] FTP - Uploading your website

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and what it does is transfer files from one computer to another. In this instance, from your computer to the web server where your site will be hosted.

To upload your website to your hosting you need to complete the fields on the FTP panel in Shopfitter 4.

Hostname: this will be provided by your hosting ISP and will be something like ftp.yourdomain.com or www.yourdomain.com. Occasionally this will be something different but the terms 'host address', 'Host' or 'hostname' will be used to identify it. Please enter your host name into this field.

User Name: the username will be supplied or confirmed by your hosting ISP too, this is often similar to an e-mail address or can be just a word or alphanumeric (words and numbers) phrase. Enter the username supplied by your hosting company in this field.

Password: your password will be given to you by your hosting ISP. Please enter it into the 'Password' field.

The above items all tell Shopfitter 4 where to upload the files to and also allow it to connect to the hosing server.

Port: For standard FTP this should be set to 21, which is the default setting.

Passive Mode: This is an advanced feature of FTP that enables the two computers, once they are connected' to automatically switch to alternative ports for uploading files. It should be left ticked by default unless specified by your host ISP.

Remote Path: You hosting ISP will tell you which folder in your hosting account your website files should be uploaded to. This should be entered into the Remote Path field along with any sub-folders you may wish to have your webshop in. Hosting ISP's differ so there is no one setup with a generic Remote Path name. Here is a list of some of the most common:

• mainwebsite_html
• public_html
• htdocs
• www
• httpdocs

Once these are set you can click the 'Upload' button.

A new window will open, the top panel shows the website files and folders on your computer. Click the 'Connect' button to connect and log into the host web server, this will then show you the 'remote' computer and the files on it.

To transfer your website files eithetr for the first time or if you are updating the site, please click 'Upload'.

Uploading can take some time, depending on the number of products so please be patient.

Using another FTP program to Upload your shop

If you prefer to use a separate FTP program (eg. Cute FTP, Filezilla, Fox FTP) you can, just edit your shop as normal in SF4 then publish and preview the shop.

Publishing the shop generates the htm files in the 'web' folder:

C:\ShopFitterBeta\Shops\YOUR SHOP NAME\web

So to upload the site using another FTP program just upload all of the contents of the 'web' folder to your remote folder.