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August 20th 2008

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Wednesday is considered either the third or the fourth day of the week, between Tuesday and Thursday. The name comes from the Middle English Wednes dei, which is from Old English Wodnes dæg, meaning the day of the Germanic god Woden (Wodan) who was a god of the Anglo-Saxons in England until about the 7th century. Wodnes dæg is like the Old Norse Oðinsdagr ("Odin's day"), which is an early translation of the Latin dies Mercurii ("Mercury's day"). Although Mercury (the messenger of the gods) and Woden (the king of the Germanic gods) are not equivalent in most regards, both gods guided the souls of the dead to the underworld.

Setting up FTP

For this chapter we will configure FTP using the Filezilla FTP Client, a free client for Windows and FireFTP Plugin, a free plugin for the Firefox web browser. Filezilla and FireFTP are both SSL aware FTP clients, If you are using a different FTP client, make sure it supports the encrypted (ftps) FTP protocol.

If you are using Internet Explorer and Outlook/Outlook Express, I can't urge you strongly enough to switch over to Firefox and Thunderbird. It only takes a few minutes and will drastically reduce the amount of malware (viruses, trojans, and worms) that can infect your system. Firefox also has much better support for pop up blocking and spyware prevention. Thunderbird is the counterpart to Firefox and is an excellent email client.

Firefox and Thunderbird have all the features that Internet Explorer and Outlook Express have and then some, they are also much more standards compliant, meaning that you will see the Internet as it was meant to be seen. There is simply no compelling reason to not use these alternative Internet applications.

Setting up FTP on Filezilla. When you start up Filezilla a new window will open and along the top of the window you will see a menu bar with entries such as "File," "Edit," "Transfer," etc. Click on "File" and from the drop-down list click "Site Manager," this will open a new dialog box.

When the dialog box appears your will see that most of the options are greyed-out. In the bottom left you will find several buttons, click "New Site." A "New site" entry will appear in the top left below "My Sites." type "GaltGroup" and press enter to give your new site a more descriptive name. Now you can see that the previously grey-out options on the right are active and ready for input.

Click the "General" tab along the top if it isn't already selected. In the "Host" text box, enter "ftp.galtgroup.net" and in the "Port" box enter "21." Below in the ''Servertype" selection list you will see this is set to "FTP - File Transfer Protocol" change this to FTPES - FTP over explicit TLS/SSL" by clicking the list, highlighting the new setting and clicking again. Below that is another selection list called "Logintype" change this for "Anonymous" to "Normal" in the same way we changed "servertype" above. Finally enter your user name and password in the indicated fields. Leave Account empty, add a comment if you like, and when finished click "OK."

That completes the setup for Filezilla, now to connect to GaltGroup via FTP, you simply click "File" from the menu bar, then highlight and click "Site Manager." When the dialog box opens select "GaltGroup" from the list below "My Sites" then click the "Connect" button found at the bottom of the dialog box.

Once connected, on the left you should see a tree list of the directories on your computer in the top box, and a list of the files and irectories in your current working directory on your local computer. On the right, you should see a tree list of the directories in your home directory on the server in the top portion, as will as a list of the files and directories in your current working directory in the bottom.

It's unwieldy to type a description of what your are seeing but once you play with it a little, you'll get the gist of what I mean.

That's all there is to setting up Filezilla for use with you GaltGroup Account. In the next section we'll walk through setting up the same things with the Firefox plugin "FireFTP."

Setting up FTP using FireFTP Once you have installed the FireFTP plug in you can start it by clicking "Tools" in the Firefox menu bar then highlighting and clicking "FireFTP." A new browser window will open and you will be looking at the FireFTP interface.

Much like we saw with Filezilla, in the left-hand portion of the window you have information about your local computer. On the far left you have a tree structure that shows the directories on your local computer, and to the right of that you have a detailed view of the files and folders in your current working directory. On the right half nothing should be visible at this point because we haven't created our account and connected to GaltGroup yet.

Let's get started. At the top of your FireFTP window you should see two buttons labeled "Manage Accounts" and "Create an Account." Click "Create an Account."

A new dialog box will appear. In the "Main" tab your will see two sections "Main Details" and "ID." In the first enter "GaltGroup" as "Account Name" and "ftp.galtgroup.net" as the host. In the "ID" section enter your user name in the "Login" text box and your password in "Password." Leave the "Anonymous" check box unchecked.

In the "Connection" tab, leave "Passive Mode" checked and "IPv6" unchecked. Set the "Security" drop-down list to "Auth TLS (Best)" by clicking "None," then highlight and click "Auth TLS (Best)." Leave the "Port" set to "21." These are all of the necessary changes required to set up your account in FireFTP. Click the "OK" button on the lower-right of the dialog box to save the settings and close the box. If there is no button visible in the lower right, you may need to re-size the window by hovering your cursor over one of the corners of the dialog box, when the cursor changes to a double arrow, click and drag the corner outwards to reveal the hidden buttons.

Looking at FireFTP's menu bar, your should see that "Manage Accounts" is now longer greyed out. If you need to change any of your settings clicking this button will active the drop-down list. Choose "Edit" to make changes to the selected account. To the right of "Manage Accounts" you will see a selection list with "GaltGroup" listed as the active account. If you set up additional accounts, this selection box is where you can select which account that is active before clicking "Manage Accounts" or "Connect." To the right of that, you will see a button labeled "Connect." clicking that button will connect you to GaltGroup's FTP server and display the contents of your home directory. If you don't see anything here, click the blue clockwise arrow icon in the upper-left portion of the right-hand window. You should be able to see a directory called "public_html" inside this directory is where your will want to upload your web pages, and anything else for your website.

You have now successfully connected to GaltGroup using both Filezilla and FireFTP, take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and enjoy a satisfied smile. In our next chapter, we'll create and upload our first web-page and get some practical experience using FTP.

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