What Is FTP?
PotPieGirl on June 29th, 2008
FTP literally means File Transfer Protocol. Sounds scary, doesn’t it? I know it did to me when I first started making my own niche websites on my own hosting. I remember hearing the phrase “Upload to Your Server” and wondering what the heck that meant!
Here is PotPieGirl’s painfully basic answer for “What Is FTP?”
FTP is how you take files and stuff that are on your computer and get them on your website.
Want a more detailed and in-depth explanation of FTP? Read this from wikipedia.
Think this: When you download a file, you take it FROM the internet and put it on your computer. When you upload a file, you are taking it from your computer and putting it onto the internet.
Yes, it can be that simple - if you let it be that simple 
For the sake of making Wordpress niche sites, FTP is how you will get your WordPress themes and WordPress plug ins on your site so you can use them. Once you do it just one single time, it will be easy for you. Just always to remember to make sure what you are ‘uploading to your server’ is being put in the right file. All themes and plugins are uploaded into the wp-content folder that is found under the domain name you are working on. Themes go into ‘themes’, and plugins go into ‘plugins’.
After you download a new theme or plug in, make sure you ‘un-zip’ it first. Un-zipping (or extracting) is a simple process of ‘releasing’ the files within a download to their non-compressed form. Files and folders are compressed before being ready for download to make it smaller - which makes it download faster and more easily.
Next, you would sign in to your FTP program and upload the new file/folder into the appropriate place.
For my FTP needs, I use a free program called FileZilla. While there are many free FTP programs out there, I started with this one, found it easy to use, and never tried another.
This is what it looks like when I am about to upload a file or folder to my server:
The file on the left are the misc themes and Wordpress plugins I have in my infamous “WordPress Stuff” file on my computer. On the right are the areas of my website where I can put these files. If it is a WP plugin that I want to add to my site, I would click ‘plugins’ on the right and make that area expand. Then I would find the plug in on the left that I want to add, right click it, and choose ‘upload’.
Done.
Now that theme or that plugin is available for me to use with the wp-admin area of my niche website.
That’s all there is to it 
If you would like to use FileZilla, you can find more info and download it for free from here.
Tags: 6 step niche sites, 6StepNicheSites, filezilla, FTP, potpiegirl, upload
June 30th, 2008 at 3:08 am
I needed this information about 6 months ago:) Upload files, and FTP were a foreign language. It was the absolute hardest thing to figure out. It took me several days of banging my head against the wall, and research to figure it out.
June 30th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Oh, Linette, I hear ya! It took me forever to realize that ‘upload to your server’ was as simple as this. Where the heck was this simple explanation when *I* was learning?