Tips & Tricks

Computing Terms

FTP -

FTP is short for "File Transfer Protocol". Basically, it's a protocol used to upload / download files from the internet (yes, there's more to the internet then the world wide web). Next time you download a file, take a look at where it's coming from. It may be from an "FTP" site (or not - depends on the webmaster).

Your web browser can handle an FTP download. If you knew of an FTP location, you would type it in your web browser like this:

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com

Notice the "ftp://" at the beginning. That tells your browser that it will be accessing an FTP site and not a web site ("http://").

Since most downloads today are done using a web browser, pure "FTPing" isn't as popular (or necessary) as it used to be. For the most part, it is used by those of us who build web pages to transfer files / pages to and from our sites. The average user may never need to get a hold of an FTP client.

However, if you feel the need to experiment with FTP, head to:

http://www.hotfiles.com

Type FTP in their search engine. You'll get a ton of FTP programs you can play with. (I personally like WS FTP - if you want to try it, type that in the search engine).

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