Over the last few months, I've been working on a project with lots of Digital Webbing creators. The unofficial title is DWPFF (Digital Webbing Presents Futuristic Fairy-Tales). It's a rather large anthology project, so there are lots of files flying about. For small files, email is fine for sending files back and forth. However, there comes a time when you need to transporter much larger files. For large file, I always try to use FTP. In working on DWPFF, I soon realized that everyone doesn't use FTP on a regular basis like I do and that some have never used (or heard) of FTP.

 

This is a short FTP Primer. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocal. Basically, it allows you to transfer files via the Internet from your computer to a FTP server and/or from the FTP to your computer.

 

In order to use FTP, you need a FTP client for your machine and a FTP server running on another machine. For an FTP client, I use Filezilla. In the past, I've also used WS_FTP, FTP Surfer and/or Dreamweaver (which has a built in FTP client). Siince I have PC running Windows, these programs may or may not have a Mac version.

 

Once you have your FTP Client, then you need to have your FTP server information. The server information is usually made up of 3 bits of information:

 

1) the server (usually something like ftp.mydomain.com)

2) a username

3) a password

 

If you are using anonymous FTP, then you will not need a username or password, but in most cases you will need all 3.

 

When you have your client and your server information, then you need to open your FTP client. Some where inside that FTP client, there is a place for you to input the 3 bits of the FTP server information. Once you find that, then you can connect to the FTP server.

 

Once connected to the FTP server, then you can move files to and from the FTP server usually in the same manner that you move files around on your computer.

 

... and that's it. Most web server space for web sites include access to the server's FTP server as that's how most web sites are placed on the server. With most web host offering unlimited server space, you can utilize this FTP resource to transfer and store large files for your comic book project.