FTP made painless

Dave Allen
Focus on the Family Satellite Network

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) has been around a while. A lot longer than the nice computer networks we have nowadays. But it is still the best way to transfer files across firewalls and between computers on unrelated networks.

FTP client programs are available, but with a few tricks, your web browser can become a friend instead of a foe. Windows can even make an FTP site look like it's on your local network.

FTP with your browser

Browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape, FireFox, Mozilla, etc) are made for browsing web pages. FTP is an after-thought with them. They tend to have trouble remembering the login names and passwords required for FTP access.

Internet Explorer at least helps you log in. If you type the ftp site (eg ftp.focussat.net) into the address window, it will get you to our anonymous site. Then if you open the File menu and click Login As, you can enter your user id and password and log in. But when you save that page as a favorite or shortcut, and the login info is lost.

Mozilla / FireFox / Netscape make it a bit tougher to log in -- you have to enter all the login info in the address line, eg ftp://userid:password@ftp.focussat.net
But when you save the page as a bookmark or shortcut, it saves the login info too. So to access the site later on, just open the bookmark or shortcut and you're "in".

Although Internet Explorer tends to forget login info, and gets confused if you use more than one login, you can "force" it to remember the info. Right-click on the shortcut or open the Favorites and right-click on the favorite. Then select Properties and find the URL box inside the properties. Then insert the userid and password into that box in the same format as entering it into the address line above.

The key, then, is the all-in-one URL: ftp://userid:password@ftp.focussat.net This is the "link" that we send out when we set up your FTP account. But you can make it yourself by putting in your userid and password. Note the colon between the two. And the userid and password are case-sensitive in FTP.

If you use other folders on the FTP site, you can save favorites or shortcuts to those folders. Save as many favorites as you want. But with Internet Explorer, you'll need to "doctor up" the properties of each one. To make a desktop shortcut of an FTP site in Internet Explorer, drag the icon in the Address window to the desktop.

FTP as a Network Place

Perhaps even easier is to add the FTP site as a "Network Place". With Windows XP, open the Start menu, then My Network Places. With older versions of Windows, find My Network Places.

Start the "Add Network Place" wizard.
For the "Internet or network address" enter the all-in-one URL above (with your info).
If you want to select a different folder on the FTP site as your network place, type that in too. In a little while, the wizard will connect to the FTP site and will help complete your typing or give you selections to choose from. (The Browse button does not work in this mode.)

Then just open "My Network Places" and drag or copy files to your local disk. The FTP site will appear as if it were on your local network. But it will be slower, since it isn't really.

Rev 2 - 3may06