Ricky’s Online Business Blog

I’ve been asked how to upload web pages to web server.  Might as well post here for the benefits of other customers.

There are a few ways to upload files to, and download files from, your web server by means of FTP (file transfer protocol). The most common way is using an FTP software for this purpose.

But I’ll show you a basic way which works, and which does not require you to install any FTP software.  If you know how to copy and paste files in Windows Explorer or My Computer, you can copy and paste files too to other servers.

1. Open up Windows Explorer or My Computer on your computer.
2. Make sure there is an address bar in Windows Explorer where you can type address.  Can’t see?  Go to View menu, click Toolbars, and turn on Address Bar.
3. Type this into the address bar - ftp://username@ftp.domain.com .  Please substitute username with your FTP account username, and ftp.domain.com with your FTP server name.  You can get these details from your hosting provider.
4. You will be prompted for your FTP account username and password.  Enter them to log on to your web server.
5. Once successful, you will be able to see the file content on your server.  If necessary, browse to the folder where you want to copy files to.
6. To copy files to your server, just copy them from your file system, and paste it to the folder.  Done!

By the way, I host a little Java applet which lets you quickly upload files by FTP here.  Try it out!

Have you ever had problem connecting to their web or mail server? While it is possible that the server is down, in many cases the connection from the customer side to the server has problem, is congested, or simply fails to work.

In such cases, it’s best to find out whether there is anything wrong in our network connection or not. You can simply use the “command prompt” service in Windows and run a few tests - namely ping, telnet and tracert.

To start, click the Start button, click Run, type cmd, press Enter, and you will be a blank screen awaiting your input. You are then ready to start each test. Let’s assume your domain name is domain.com. You should substitute domain.com with your own domain name in tests below.

Ping

This is a quick connection test to the server. If the connection is OK, you should receive responses from the server. On the command prompt, type:

ping www.domain.com - test the web server
ping pop.domain.com - test the incoming mail server (old server)
ping smtp.domain.com - test the outgoing mail server (old server)
ping mail domain.com - test the mail server (new cPanel-based Linux server)

Telnet

It tries to log you on to the server and sees whether it’s successful or not.

telnet pop.domain.com 110 - test the incoming mail server at port 110 (old server)
telnet smtp.domain.com 28 - test the outgoing mail server at port 28 (old server) - change to port 25 if you are using fixed IP address
telnet mail domain.com 110 - test the mail server at port 110 (new cPanel-based Linux server)

Tracert

It reports any connection problem along the way connecting to a server.

tracert www.domain.com - test the web server
tracert pop.domain.com - test the incoming mail server (old server)
tracert smtp.domain.com - test the outgoing mail server (old server)
tracert mail domain.com - test the mail server (new cPanel-based Linux server)

After each test, you can copy the result and send to us. To copy the result, click on the little icon at the top left corner of the command prompt window, and then click Edit and then Mark. Use your mouse to highlight the area of the window you want to copy, and then press Enter to copy.

Then you can email the test result to us. To exit from the command prompt window, simply type exit and then Enter.

Should you have any question, please contact us here.

The most popular email software our customers are using are Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express and Mozilla Thunderbird. Outlook Express is by far the most popular as it comes with Windows free of charge.

But the way Outlook Express stores its emails may not be the best way. Unfortunately things can happen that the emails can get corrupted. For example, if you suddenly power off your computer when it is downloading emails, the downloading is interrupted and your emails in Inbox and some folders can be gone.

So if you are using Outlook Express, or any email software for that matter, it’s prudent that you back up your emails regularly, especially when you have important company emails. One customer of mine opens and saves every email as a file in the hard drive. But this is just too tedious

Worry no more. Just grab a copy of the free Outlook Express Quick Backup. With a click of the “Complete Backup” button, it backs up all your emails in all folders. Not only your emails, but your folder structure, address book, email accounts and settings are backed up as well. Great tool!

In case your emails are lost, you can always restore back your previous backup. Just click the “Complete Restore” button, your Outlook Express will be back as previous. Thumb up!