FTP and cPanel's File Manager, It is most likely that one of the first things you will want to do after getting your web hosting account, and taking a quick look at cPanel's interface, is get some files onto your website. So how do you accomplish this? The most common method is via something called FTP. If you have ever downloaded anything on the Internet before, you have likely used FTP, perhaps without even realizing it. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is a method of transferring files from remote locations to your local computer (called downloading) and vice versa (sending files from your computer to a remote location is called uploading).

In this article we will cover most methods that cPanel provides to enable you to transfer files to and from your web hosting account, including:

• Discussing methods of uploading files to your hosting account
• Learning about the types of FTP clients available
• Learning how to work with FTP
• Accessing the main FTP account
• Creating FTP accounts and placing limits on those accounts
• Deleting FTP accounts
• Checking FTP quotas for accounts you create
• Managing Anonymous FTP access
• Monitoring FTP access and killing FTP sessions
• SFTP (Secure FTP)
• FXP (File Exchange Protocol)
• Navigating your site with the cPanel file manager
• Uploading files and downloading files, editing and managing files with the file manager
• WYSIWYG HTML editing via WYSIWYG Pro in the file manager

Before discussing FTP and other file transfer methods in cPanel, we need to learn a bit more about the various types of FTP tools that you can use.

FTP Basics

For those of you who may not be familiar with FTP, it is important to understand what FTP is, what it does, and what sorts of tools you need to use it.

General FTP Tools

There are many tools that can handle FTP in one form or another, but not all are created equal for our purposes. These can be broadly categorized as :

• Web Browsers: Although most web browsers can handle FTP, they generally only handle it in a single direction (remote files to local computer) and they cannot handle the reverse (local files to remote computer) or do not handle it well. It is not recommended that you use a web browser to handle FTP to or from your website.
• HTML/Website Editing Programs: If you use any sort of website editor that runs off of your computer (like Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, Nvu, and so on), it most likely has the ability to upload, download, and synchronize files via FTP. The focus of these sorts of programs is to create web content and the ability to FTP files to your web hosting account is just a convenience. If you plan to only work on your website in one of these sorts of programs, then the FTP features should serve you well.
• Stand-alone FTP Clients: This category includes all programs that are designed primarily to work with FTP, though they may handle other types of transfers as well. It is recommended that you download and install one of these types of programs even if you have only one of the types of items mentioned above.