Understanding FTP

Every TouchBasic Hosting plan comes with an FTP site included.

FTP is basically a folder on the web server that can store files. People can then use an FTP client software to upload or download these files. For a more thorough explanation see the wikipedia description.

The advantage to using FTP is usually the fact that you can deal with larger files that are too big to attach with an email (gmail limit is 50Mb) or even too big to use a free web service like yousendit.com (limit is 100Mb).

The way it works is:
You get 15 FTP accounts (similar to email accounts) so either you can have up to 15 people using the FTP site (with 15 diferent usernames and passwords). But, the simplest way to get started with FTP would be to just set up 1 FTP username/password and only give it out to the few people that need it (recommended but use a password that’s different from your important ones).

Then, the only issue becomes the amount of space available with your hosting plan. The 1-year Web Hosting plan from TouchBasic is $60/yr and has 2Gb storage (for both FTP, website, emails). Most websites use only a small fraction of this space and so there would likely be plenty of room for FTP, etc.

Recommended FTP client softwares:
(For a complete list see here.)

- Filezilla (Windows)
- Fugu or fetch (Mac)
- gFTP (Linux)

- FireFTP extension for FireFox (all platforms)