What is FTP?

In the past I have defined many Web hosting jargon words that have sent many people to scratching their heads and calling upon the mighty powers of Google to look for an answer. Today I have one more for you. How many times have you hear of somebody saying they needed to FTP something? How about that they need to find a good FTP client? Thankfully FTP is a pretty simple concept to get your mind wrapped around.

FTP stands for file transfer protocol. What in the heck is File Transfer Protocol? The easy way to look at it would be to say it is just a way of transferring files over the Internet from one computer to another. Thinking of the Internet as one big network, FTP is the process in which you can get files from one computer to another computer across the globe.

Most of the time that other computer is going to be your Web hosting server, which in itself is a computer.

Think of it as your Web page files taking a hike across the country in a few seconds. No need to pack the camping gear, get out the toothbrush or even a change of underwear. With the high speed Internet access we have today even larger files can be moved pretty quickly.

FTP came to be way before the time of the Internet we know and love today. It was first used as only a series of text comands to move files from one computer to another over a network. While it hasn't evolved from the main purpose it had, it has "grown up" I guess you could say. Now we use programs such as SmartFTP or CuteFTP to do the work for us.

Many of these FTP programs have features on top of features. The only ones you will probably ever use though is the act of connecting to your Web server to upload or download files, documents and folders.