FTP

FTP (an initialism of File Transfer Protocol) can be used to send files between computers.

FTP requires that the person or computer that you're meaning to send files to is running an FTP server. For an example of such a case, consider people.reed.edu. The remainder of this guide assumes that you have a file named index.html in the current working directory that you'd like to upload to people.reed.edu to set up your website.

Using FTP on Linux and MacOS

You have an FTP client built in. Connect to a server over SFTP (the "S" stands for "Secure") like in the following:

$ sftp <your-username>@people.reed.edu
<your-username>@sftp.reed.edu's password:

After logging in with your usual credentials, you get a stripped down command prompt. You can use ls and pwd to get your bearings:

Connected to sftp.reed.edu.
sftp> ls
html
sftp> pwd
Remote working directory: /reed.edu/home/y/o/your-username

cd works as per usual, e.g.:

> cd html
sftp> pwd
Remote working directory: /reed.edu/home/y/o/your-username/html

Now, you have a few extra commands: get will download files, and put will upload them. If you have a file named index.html,

> put index.html

will upload it to the server.

Using FTP on Windows

This section is TODO.