Session on HTML and CSS, markup languages used for creating websites.
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Great job! Now you have an amazing website, but it’s stuck on your computer where no one else can find it or view it. How do you get your website onto the Internet so it can be shared?
To get your site on the internet, you’ll need hosting — that is, a remote computer that will stay on day in and day out to serve the website to visitors. In theory, you could host your website on your own computer, but in practice, it usually makes sense to purchase hosting from a hosting company or use a free service.
You’ll also need a way of getting your website to your host. That’s where FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, comes in.
FTP is a protocol used to share files from your computer (a client) to another computer called a server, and back again over the Internet. This is something we do ALL THE TIME, but we refer to it as “uploading” and “downloading.”
Note: Though FTP stands for file transfer protocol, you are not really transfering or moving your files from your computer; instead they are copied to the server. Fear not!
In order to transfer your website files (also called your website’s directory) to a server you will need:
Assuming you all can manage accessing the internet on your own, let’s focus on the latter two.
An FTP client is software designed specifically for the purpose of sharing files between computers. There are widely-used, freely-available GUI applications (i.e., applications that use a graphic user interface, or the point-and-click, user-friendly software interfaces you are used to) that you can download for use, including Filezilla and Cyberduck. You can also run an FTP client program through the command line on most computers, though the process varies by operating system.
You also need a server to transfer your files to, where they can be stored and shared on the Internet. This is what we call web hosting and there are multiple options here as well. Reclaim Hosting has been a popular option for academics in recent years. As long as your site is just plain HTML and CSS, it’s also possible to host your website for free on services such as GitHub Pages.
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