Uploading website

[Boergoat]

Hello All:

Just finished my website and would like to get it uploaded. I'm sure this question has been asked many times "How do I do It"?. When I login to Blue Host I get a different screen than has be discussed before, I do not have an FTP manager icon. I cannot locate on the panel where to go for instructions.

Any help would be appreciated.

Howard

[Early Out]

The easiest way to handle this is to use an FTP client program (the Upload option under File Manager will work, but you're stuck with uploading files one by one, essentially).

A personal favorite, and it's free, is WS_FTP LE, still available here (http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=wsftp). Grab version 6, the last one listed. Once you've installed it, launch it, and create a profile for Bluehost. The host name/address is www.yourdomain.com (whatever it really is). The host type is UNIX (standard). The username is your 8-character BH username. The password is your BH password. Uncheck "Anonymous," but check "Save Pwd."

Before connecting, go to the Startup tab. The Initial Remote Site Folder should be public_html. The Initial Local Folder should be something like c:\documents and settings\owner\my documents (wherever you keep your stuff). The Time Offset should be the number of hours between your location and the BH servers (Utah, Mountain Daylight Time). I'm on the East Coast, two hours ahead of Utah, so I enter "2".

For everything else, you can leave the defaults. Once you connect, just choose the files you want to upload from the left side (shift-click to select contiguous groups of files or folders, ctrl-click to cherry-pick them), and hit the right arrow.

One other setting that you might find handy - under Options, the Pro tab, select "Don't transfer older or same files during directory transfers." That way, you can tell it to upload an entire directory, but it will upload only files that are newer or different. That can be a real time-saver.