by Thomas Nicolosi
Website Developer, 1to1products.com

When it is time to add content to your website we will probably need you to send us some large files such as images. It's often inconvenient or impossible to email these files because of their size, quantity, or both.

For these cases we use File Transfer Protocol (FTP). If you are using Windows this capability is already built into Windows Explorer, the part of the operating system that you use to manage the files on your computer.

Use the following procedure to upload files to the FTP site using Windows Explorer:

1. Right click "Start";

2. Select "Explore" from the pop-up menu.

3. Allow Windows Explorer to open. You should see a display of your local file system.

4. In the address bar of the Windows Explorer window paste in or type the address to the FTP server as follows:

ftp://username:password@mywebsite.com

Then click "Go" or press "Enter".

In real life replace "username" with the ftp site user name,"password" with the ftp site password, and "mywebsite.com" with the URL (web address) of the FTP site.

(Note to clients: Please call or click here and request the FTP information for your project.)

5. Allow Windows Explorer to connect to the server.

6. Open another Windows Explorer window (steps 1 - 3 above) and navigate to the files you want to upload.

7. Drag the file or files you want to upload into the FTP server folder. Windows will display a progress bar. Allow the files to upload to the server. You will see them displayed in the folder window.

That is all there is to it! Once you obtain your FTP login information you are ready to go. Please be aware that specialized FTP software exists that is much more efficient for large jobs. I recommend that more experienced Windows users check out Filezilla, a free and Open Source FTP client.