FlashFXP Tutorial and Installation How To

This tutorial describes how to use FlashFXP with your NEXCESS.NET hosting account.

For the sake of this tutorial we'll assume that you own the domain 'johnsmith.com' and your FTP username is 'ftp@johnsmith.com'.

Follow these steps to complete the tutorial:

1. You can obtain FlashFXP for 30 day trial from http://www.flashfxp.com.
2. Once you install FlashFXP, open it up. You should now be on the main screen. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Connect' button on the top right side and go to 'Quick Connect'. You should now see the quick connect dialog box. This is where you enter your web hosting account information.

   

   For this example, we'll enter the following information:

   • Server: ftp.johnsmith.com
   • User Name: ftp@johnsmith.com - Make sure you uncheck the 'Anonymous' checkbox
   • Password: myftppassword
   • If you are behind a firewall, you may need to enable Passive Mode. You can do this by clicking on the 'Toggles' tab then checking 'Use Passive Mode'.

   

   

3. Click on the 'Connect' button to connect. If you are having problems connecting here are some things to check:
   1. If you just obtained your NEXCESS.NET web hosting account then your domain may not be switched over to our service yet and instead of using your domain in the 'Host or URL' box you should use the temporary domain name given to you in your welcome e-mail.
   2. It may be that you are behind a firewall and/or router and need to use passive FTP. Check step 2 to see how to enable passive FTP.

   Once the FTP program makes a connection, your screen should look like this:

   

4. The list of files/folders on the right is the view of your web hosting account. The list of files/folders on the left is the view of your local machine.

   You'll notice a directory named 'html' in your web hosting account. This directory is where all of your website files should be placed in order for them to be seen when you type in http://yourdomain.com.

   

   Another important and often overlooked note is that you must have a file named index.html or index.htm which acts as you homepage. When a person types in http://yourdomain.com our webserver will look for the file named index.html or index.htm (there are a few others as well) first and will load that page. If you double click on the 'html' folder, it will take you to a list of files inside the 'html' folder. Here you will see the index file.

   

5. You will also notice files named 404.html, 403.html etc. These files can be used to setup custom 404 (page not found) error pages. Just edit these files and customize them as you wish.

   

6. Often when installing scripts and other web tools you will need to "chmod" or change permissions on a file or directory. It's easy to do from within the FTP session. Just right-click on the file/directory you'd like to change permissions on select 'Attributes (CHMOD)' and you'll receive the dialog below. You can then either type in the permissions you'd like to set using numbers (700 for example) or use the various check boxes to set the permissions. The FlashFXP tutorial is now complete.

   

   

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