FTPplanet.com Blog

July 21, 2008

FTP Speed Tips

Are you trying to find a way to speed up your file transfer?

Read through FTPplanet's Speed Tips Tutorial here:

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the most efficient way to upload and download files. With some very powerful features -- drag and drop transfers! auto-resume! -- there is one basic item that everybody seems to want: faster transfers.
If you've every found yourself asking why your FTP client isn't transferring files as fast as you'd expect, a key thing to remember is that there are a lot of external factors that determine FTP speed. Your FTP client is just a small piece of the puzzle.

These five questions will help you determine what may be causing slow transfers for you and may help you increase your speed.

1. What other programs are using your internet connection?

If you're running many programs that use your connection at the same time, your connection is being shared and can be spread thin. Stopping programs that use a lot of bandwidth should result in faster transfers.

These programs include P2P file sharing programs (WinMX, eDonkey, BitTorrrent, etc.), MP3/video download programs (Yahoo! Music, iTunes), streaming media (online radio, movie trailers), multiple Web browser windows, other downloads, etc.

These programs can also include spyware or adware installed on your system (you may not be aware of this -- visit CNet's Security Center for more information).

2. Does your ISP provide slower uploads than downloads?

If you're experiencing lightning fast downloads and slower uploads, check with your ISP to see what your upload limit is. Most ISPs provide more bandwidth for downloads than uploads.

3. What is the server's limit?

You'll never experience faster transfer than the server allows. In other words, the server limit may be your limit. Check with the FTP server administrator for information on a specific server.

4. Do you have multiple connections open to the same server?

If so, you're using up more of your bandwidth at once. Generally, this allows for faster downloads at a slower rate per connection. This can be a perceived slowness, as the sum of all connections can be quite fast.

5. Who else is connected to the server?

As noted in question three above, FTP servers have a limit. If other people are connecting to the server at the same time, it will affect your transfer speeds.

Posted by Erik Small at 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) digg this add to del.icio.us add to My Web Furl this page

July 09, 2008

Guidelines for Strong Passwords

Susan Harkins of the TechRepublic blog put together some basic, yet extremely critical password guidelines.

I like the second one -- Memorize passwords -- But sometimes it's hard when many passwords are close, slightly-varied combinations of your birthday or street address.

Here are Susan's top guidelines:
-- Use a unique password for every account that requires one.
-- Memorize your passwords; don’t write them down.
-- Passwords should be at least six characters long (more is better).
-- Replace all passwords regularly.
-- Passwords should contain a mixture or characters: upper and lower case letters, numerals, and other special characters.

Here's the full article:
Strong Password Guidelines

Posted by Erik Small at 08:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) digg this add to del.icio.us add to My Web Furl this page

July 08, 2008

Active FTP and Passive FTP

Did you know that there are different flavors of FTP?

Here's a post by Jimmy Thomas that gets into some of the details of the FTP protocol and addresses some advanced topics like ports, control and data channels, active and passive FTP and anonymous FTP.

Posted by Hugh Garber at 07:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) digg this add to del.icio.us add to My Web Furl this page

July 02, 2008

Using FTP for a WordPress.org Blog

Many thanks to Cheryl Johnson (aka The Queen of Kludge) for creating a tutorial on using FTP to upload files to a Wordpress.org blog.

Here's her post on the first phase of the process: Downloading, installing and setting-up file transfer software. And she's got much more info on her blog about Wordpress also.

The tutorial does a great job of walking you through how to get WS_FTP software, how to install it on your computer, and how to connect your WS_FTP software to a server.

And Cheryl -- Many thanks for the FTPplanet mention in your post!

Posted by Hugh Garber at 08:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) digg this add to del.icio.us add to My Web Furl this page

June 30, 2008

Basic Features of WS_FTP

WS_FTP has many useful basic features built into the product. Here's a full list:

- Connect your PC to a remote FTP site

- Browse files and folders on both the FTP site and your PC

- Copy and move files between your PC and an FTP site

- Copy files from one FTP site to another (Professional version)

- Save and organize connection parameters for your favorite FTP sites

- Resume interrupted file transfers

- Automatically retry failed transfers

- Transfer a single file in multiple parts (Professional Version)

- Make a secure connection (with SSL or SSH) so that all data is encrypted as it is transferred (Professional version)

- Append a file to another file on the other system (Professional version)

- Track and save the folder paths you visit for quick access another time

- Perform multiple file transfers using the WS_FTP Transfer Manager

- Schedule large files for download at a later, non-peak time with the WS_FTP Scheduler Utility (Professional version)

- Find files and folders meeting certain criteria using the WS_FTP Find Utility (Professional version)

- Synchronize directory structures between your PC and an FTP site using the WS_FTP Synchronize Utility (Professional version)

- Synchronize two remote sites (Professional version)

- Integrate WS_FTP with your browser for faster downloading of files from the Web

- Browse remote and local sites with thumbnail view

- Auto-connect to remote sites on application start-up

- Display local and remote image files as thumbnails

Posted by Erik Small at 09:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) digg this add to del.icio.us add to My Web Furl this page

June 25, 2008

Importing other sites into WS_FTP

Are you managing or editing other web sites with different FTP programs? WS_FTP has an easy feature which allows you to import other sites.

Here's a quick tutorial with screenshots on what this looks like within the WS_FTP navigation:

http://www.ftpplanet.com/tutorial/import_sites/index.htm

Posted by Erik Small at 08:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) digg this add to del.icio.us add to My Web Furl this page

June 24, 2008

Tools of the Trade

I'm always think its interesting to hear what software people use themselves and recommend to others. Here's a great list of personal software tools by indie filmmaker Angelo Bell.

Many of the usual suspects are listed such as FrontPage, Photoshop, Roxio.... As well as a few new ones that I'll check out. Angelo also lists WS_FTP as his Windows file transfer software.

"WS_FTP - WS_FTP - while my main personal computers are Macs I was brought up in a PC environment. WS_FTP is a simple FTP solution for Windows PC’s. It totally gets the job done."

Angelo - Not sure if you'll see this blog post or not, but if you do, I want to wish you luck with The Broken Hearts Club. Looks like a great movie.... I'm looking forward to watching it when it's released!

Posted by Hugh Garber at 07:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) digg this add to del.icio.us add to My Web Furl this page