Your account with your ISP (Internet Service Provider) includes: login privileges, an email address, and space on the server (ie. their computer). That space can be used for whatever you like - your own web page, backup space for your hard drive, or storage for files to share with others.
Assume you want to share a photo with several people. If you send it by email, recipients must wait for the email file to download then store it on their computer. Instead, you can "post" the file on the server, and notify them of the address (URL) where they can go to view it. This is much friendlier!
(Just remember, though, that anything you "post" can then be seen by anyone who happens to stumble on it!)
You have been assigned a directory in the server with the same name as your login. Within that directory is a sub-directory called public_html. For example, if your login is jsmith@nexicom.net, you would transfer your files to jsmith/public_html
However, the address (URL) of your files would be http://www.nexicom.net/~jsmith/...
For example, if you transfer a file named bowser.jpg to jsmith/public_html, the URL of that file would be http://www.nexicom.net/~jsmith/bowser.jpg
If no file is specified, the "default" file name is index.htm. This is handy if you are making your own web page. If you name the first file of your web page index.htm, then the resulting address is just www.nexicom.net/~jsmith.
Keep file names within DOS / Unix standards: ie. maximum 8-character name with 3-character extension. Remember that Unix is case sensitive (Bowser.jpg and bowser.jpg are different file names.)
There are several ways to upload files to a server. NetScape Communicator, for example, includes an upload facility. However, this is not compatable with all servers (eg. Sympatico). The simplest, and safest, method I have found is a program called WS_FTP. This is availabe - free - at www.tucows.com.
The file you download is in compressed form: ws_ftp32.zip. You will need to "unzip" it with WinZip or PKUnzip. If you don't have one of these on your computer, download WinZip from TuCows. Once WinZip is installed on your machine, it will automatically pop up whenever you click on a .zip file in File Manager.
The "un-zipped" file is WS_FTP32.exe. When you run this file (from File Manger or Start/Run) it will install the program for you. It will ask you to specify
Before you use WS_FTP you must set up a "profile", which will then be used to log in to the server. This information is specific to your ISP. The following entries are for Nexicom (these are available on the Nexicom home page). They will be different for Sympatico or other ISPs.
On the first screen, specify:
This is the easy part! The file transfer screen is very similar to the Windows Explorer (aka File Manager).