So, your obsession for Sleater-Kinney has driven you to create your first homepage. After a few weeks of toiling, you've finally got everything just the way you want it and can hardly wait to put it on the Web for all the world to see. Visions of fame and fortune run through your head. Maybe now you'll get the prized autograph you've always wanted. You rush to the computer, boot up your machine, and come to an abrupt halt. You're paralyzed. You have absolutely no idea how to get your files from your computer to the Web. Your fingers lie limply on the keyboard. What in the world are you going to do?
The time has come to demystify the FTP process. FTP stands for file transfer protocol. Its name is pretty self-explanatory: FTP is the protocol you use to transfer files between two machines. The nifty thing about FTP is that the two machines involved in the file transfer can be different platforms. You can do your work on a Mac and send files to a PC or Unix machine (as long as it's running FTP server software).
For a whirlwind tour of the protocol's many uses and features, check out Mike's primer on the basics of FTP.
There are a whole slew of ways you can FTP, but since my favorite client is Fetch (for the Mac only), I'll use it as an example to illustrate how transferring files works. If you work on a PC, you might want to check out CuteFTP. If you're on a Unix box or using a telnet or terminal emulation program on any platform, you can simply FTP from the command line.
So let's get down to the nitty-gritty.
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