Step 17 – Uploading the website

Last update: February 21 2019

After all that hard work, you want to share your website with the world (or the world wide web, really). So in this step, you’ll learn to upload your website to a web server. This can be done by:

Time To Go Live!

For your website to become visible for the whole world, you need to upload its files to a webserver. You need a host for this. (Why not consider me?)

Most hosts support various ways for you to upload your files to the web. For instance, I provide my clients with a web based file upload tool within their control panel, as well as FTP access.

Web Based File Upload

This works different for each host, but usually they’ll allow you to login to your account, go to the location of your website and upload the files, using an online form or a drag and drop function. The location for your files is usually a directory named public_html or www. Once you upload your files there, they are publicly published.

FTP; the File Transport Protocol

If you plan on working on your site, on the regular, FTP is the easiest to use. Your web host can provide you with a login account for FTP access.

There is a lot of FTP software out there. WS_FTP was always a simple one, but Filezilla Client is currently very popular (which is free). Also, you can use the ftp protocol using Windows Explorer (open it by pressing the Windows key and the letter E (for explorer) at once). You’re host probably provided you with the FTP address. If it’s not in there already, precede it with ftp:// or sftp:// and add this address in the location bar. It will ask for your login information. After this, you can upload files as if you’re working on a local drive (drag and drop files).

All FTP software require similar settings. They need an address to go to, a user name and a password. Once you’ve set all of that, you access your tiny bit of space on the world wide web. On the left side, you’ll see the files on your local drives (your computer). On the right, you’ll see the server. There, you’ll look for a directory called public_html or www. Once found, you can look for your local files in the left window and either drag and drop the files, or select them and use the arrow pointing to the right to upload them.

Good To Know

Your files are always copied to the server, so you always have your own copy stored on your computer.

Make sure the directory structure on the server is the same as the directory of your website on your computer.

Your website is visible in a browser the moment you upload files. Usually files named index, home or default are automatically recognized as the homepage.

Go to Step 18 and get promoting

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