Yesterday I found out Windows XP has a built in FTP program.
It’s simply called ‘ftp’ and is accessed via the command line and it’s become one of my most favoriatist tools ever. Previously to update my website I had to use my browser to access cPanel and upload files one at a time - ugh.
The alternative is to use an FTP program such as cuteFTP to login and upload files that way. CuteFTP is a great program, but it’s not free, and I’m on a university student budget here.
The best thing about ftp (the program, not the protocol) is that you can create a script file with all the commands you want to perform, which means that I can create a batch file to call ftp and deloy work from my local machine to my webserver in one click.
My batch file is called with “ftp -i -s:ftp.config peachysoft.com”
Where ftp.config is the name of a text file with all the commands for logging in, updating etc..
Here is a webpage with the documentation for ftp
http://www.nsftools.com/tips/MSFTP.htm
One last thing: If you are uploading binary files make sure you set your upload type to binary, it took me about an hour to work out why my Java Applet game I’m working on was not loading correctly.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Ben // Aug 26, 2007 at 9:35 pm
The command line FTP is good for getting past Websense (a censorship program that runs in lots of schools, unis and libraries), but it can be a bit tedious using it all the time.
I didn’t know you could use a batch file for it though - that’s definitely *very* handy, thank you!
I usually use Ubuntu Linux for everything, but FileZilla is an amazing (FREE!) FTP program that works on both Linux *and* Windows. Here’s the link:
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
It’s definitely my favourite, and on Windows it is extremely powerful - you can right click files in the FTP client to open them for editing, which saves a lot of time.
If you haven’t tried it, you should. It’s free
The best thing about developing on Linux though, is that *everything* is free. Especially for a student budget, that’s very good
Cheers,
Ben.
2 admin // Aug 27, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Thanks Ben.
I’ve never been a linux user before - because well, I couldn’t live without Visual Studio
However, because my current project is entirely in Java and PHP I’ve been tempted to give linux a go as there are no tools for this project that are windows specific. Unlike my .Net projects.
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