DreamHost FTP
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. After you prepare your site offline, you need to move all your web site pages to your hosting server. FTP is a protocol made to transfer files from your system to server. DreamHost also provides FTP access for you to transfer your files to DreamHost server. When you sign up with DreamHost, you need to provide username and password. You can ftp login to your DreamHost server using that username and password.
FTP Clients
For accessing your FTP account, you need FTP clients. There are many different clients available for different operating systems. You can find a big list of FTP clients at Wikipedia FTP Clients List.
Many HTML editors also provide inbuilt FTP support. So you can edit file and upload it to the servers from HTML editor itself. Some editors also provide the support of direct editing. So as soon as you change and save the file, it will automatically be updated to the server.
FTP And Security
FTP is not a secure protocol. FTP uses plain text to transfer username, password and files. So when you use FTP, there is a chance of your information, including your username and password, being stolen on the Internet. I never use FTP to transfer files to server.
There is Secure FTP (SFTP) available. DreamHost supports SFTP also. You can use SFTP to transfer your files. I always use SFTP. As end user it won't make any difference to you whether you use FTP or SFTP but if you use SFTP all your file transfer will happen securely. To enable SFTP support, login to panel. Go to Users -> Manage Users . Click on the Edit button for user to which you want to allow SFTP access.
Select SFTP account to enable only SFTP account or Shell account to enable SFTP and SSH account.
Please always try to use SFTP whenever possible.
DreamHost WebFTP
There are some situations where it's not possible to use FTP client. Say you are using a system in cyber cafe where it is not possible to install FTP client. What if you need to access your server files in that situation? DreamHost provides WebFTP for such cases. For login to WebFTP, go to http://webftp.dreamhost.com . Fill out the details like server name, username and password.
You can do almost each task using WebFTP which you can do using FTP client.
WebFTP has limitation on uploading files. You can upload maximum of 2 MB big file. That's fine because WebFTP is made just for use in emergency. You can't use WebFTP for daily usage.
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