How do I ftp using AOL?

How do I FTP using
America Online's
Built-in FTP client?

Site

Server

What the heck is "uploading"?

"Uploading" means sending files from the computer you're using to another computer somewhere. FTP = file transmission protocol. "Downloading" means you are receiving files from a remote computer to your computer.
If you don't want to use AOL, check out the basics for uploading using a PPP or SLIP Internet access account.

The basics on uploading using America Online

Create a page. An html page is just a text file. Here's the basic structure. Just copy the text between the horizontal lines below and paste into a plain text file. Name the file example.html or example.htm if you use DOS or Windows 3.1, and place this text file in a directory on your local computer so you know where to find it when it's time to upload. You can customize the page by changing the contents between the <body> ..text.. </body> tags.
```
    <html>
    <head>
    <TITLE>A Simple HTML Example</TITLE>
    </head>
    <body>
    <H1>HTML is Easy To Learn</H1>
    <P>Welcome to the world of HTML. 
    This is the first paragraph. While short it is 
    still a paragraph!</P>
    <P>And this is the second paragraph.</P>
    </body>
    </html>
```
Upload the page to your web site. If you don't have a full PPP Internet access account a good and efficient way to upload and download files to and from your web site is by using AOL's ftp client. Here's how, step by step:
1. Have your Sphynx userid and password handy.
2. Login to AOL
3. Go to AOL's Internet Connection area.
4. Then select "ftp - download files". You should get a screen that says "File Transfer Protocol". Click on the icon that says Go to FTP.
5. You'll get another screen that says "File Transfer Protocol (FTP)". Here choose the button that says Other Site. You'll get a dialog box asking you to enter the name of the FTP site you want to connect to. Here type www.sphynx.com and click the check box that says Ask for login name and password. Click "connect".
6. You'll now be presented with a dialog box asking for your login name; there enter your userid,
  your-id
  Then enter your password in the password box (you were issued a password via email when you ordered your Sphynx Site) Click the AOL "continue" button.
7. You should now "arrive" in your root directory. There you will see three files. One, named index.html is your default home page, placed there when we configured your site. Two files, one named constructsign.gif and one named new.gif are graphics that display on your home page - index.html
8. OK, now you're almost done. See the icon buttons on the AOL screen? Click on Upload. You'll get a dialog box asking you to name the file you're about to upload. That is, you're giving it a name on the remote (sphynx's) computer. Here, enter example.html Note, you've added an "ell" to the end of "htm". Before you click the "continue" button, note on the screen there are two or three formats you can choose to upload in. Since this is a text file, choose ASCII format. When you start uploading picture files (*.gif or *.jpg) be sure to use Binary format. For now, choose "ASCII". When you click "continue" you'll be asked to "select a file".
9. Now you will be presented with a navigation dialog to help you find the file you want to upload from your local computer to your Sphynx Site. Navigate through the directories until you find where you stored example.htm (or example.html if you named it that) and select it. AOL gives you the option of selecting multiple files to upload. DO NOT click the "compress" checkbox. You want the files in native form, not compressed. Now upload. Other buttons on the AOL screen will allow you to create directories, rename files, delete files and download files from your site.
10. After you finish uploading the file or files you've selected, you should see them in your directory window. Now close out that window and exit the FTP area of AOL.
Check your work. Open the AOL web browser. You will be able to view what you've just uploaded by opening the URL of the file you just put on Sphynx's server. In your browser menu find "open URL" or "open Location" and type this in the dialog box:
http://sphynx.com/sitename/example.html
Make sure that's what you named the file, example.html If you named it something else, append the name of the file thus:
http://sphynx.com/sitename/name-of-file.html

Remember, after you first load a page with your browser and then use a bookmark or history bookmark to go back to that same page, you may be seeing what your browser has cached on your local disk. Be sure to hit "reload" every time you update a page so you can see the changes you've made.

Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?

OK, I hope this is enough information to get you started. If you need more help with basic html, there are tons of tutorials on html authoring on the web. Just do a webcrawler search for "html authoring" or "web page design". Or, if you need more technical help, write support@sphynx.com