File Transfer Protocol

Now that we have pointed you in the right direction in finding a hosting provider that meets your needs, we have to get those files that we created on our local development server up onto our shiny new production server. This step is usually completed with a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) application. FTP is a standard protocol in networking that is used to transfer files and documents from one computer to another. On your hosting machine there is an FTP server running that will allow you to connect to that machine using an FTP client on your desktop or workstation. There are tons of free FTP programs out there, but my personal favorite is a free open source piece of software called FileZilla (http://filezilla-project.org/), shown in Figure 13–11.