Public ftp and Public html:

[jimarse]

Hi evryone,

I have a silly question to ask. Please be patient with me:

What is the difference between the public ftp and the public html folders on my server space?

I understand I am to upload my html files, images and other stuff used in pages to the public html folder, but what is the public ftp for?

Can someone explain and give me an example of how someone would use it?

Is it a good place tp stick pdf's I would like peple to download?

Confused.
Jimarse

[DCE]

public_html is your webserver root, it is where you upload all files that you want to available to web browsers

public_ftp is a folder where you can store files and allow other people to download them as opposed to veiwing them

does that make sense?

[jimarse]

Yes, it does thank you very much.

How though does the user get to the file that I have put into the public ftp folder? For example, let's say I put a pdf file (test.pdf) nto the public ftp folder. How do make it accessible to the user. Can I just link to it? If so how?

Thanks again.

J

[xharine]

Link to it by using
"<a href="ftp://yourdomain.com/test.pdf">yourlink</a>"

Hope this helps

[jimarse]

Hi xharine,

Thanks for replying. For some reason it's not working for me. Here is my page with the link you suggest:

http://testbed.davidsloss.net/downloadpdftest.html

It comes up saying no test2.pdf file is unavailble. Testbed is sub domain of davidsloss.net. Does the sub domain have to have it's own ftp public folder, or am I just missing something v. simple?

Thanks again.

J.

[xharine]

Hi,
did you actually upload the file to your "public_html" folder or your "public_ftp" folder. You have to upload to "public_ftp" folder to use the ftp:// protocol.

=) Tell me if this helps?

[jimarse]

Yes, I did. I'm looking at it right now. I have two pdf's in there, the one I'm linking from the second link on the page is test2.pdf.

j.

[xharine]

Hi,
Try this. Go to your control panel, click on the button called "anon ftp", then go to control, then click to allow anon ftp access to ftp.davidsloss.net.
Then when u set the link, link it to
ftp://ftp.davidsloss.net/testb.pdf

it should work now.

[jimarse]

Did it. Doesn't work. It's still saying that the files don't exist. I can see in the status bar that it's 'setting passive mode' whatever that means!

Thanks for help though xharine. I do appreciate it.

[xharine]

Maybe u should submit a trouble ticket. I tried it through my ftp site and it seemed to work
=)

[jimarse]

I did that last night. Graham sorted me very quickly. Apparently I had to use:

<a href="ftp://anonymous@davidsloss.net:anonymous@davidsloss.net/testb.pdf">link
</a>

because my ip is dynamic. Not quite sure what all this means, but its working great now!

Live n' learn eh?

Thanks again for help though. You're most kind.