Transfering content to a website using commercial packages

From the official document:
 * "This unit defines the competency required to transfer content from a remote location to a web server using a range of commercial IT products. The end objective is the successful upload of new or revised information on a website."

Basically, it's all about getting your freshly created web site off your local computer and onto the web so that it can be seen by your adoring public. To move the source files (html pages, images, flash, mp3 music, etc) you will need some software that understands and uses the File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

You can read more about this unit on the National Training Information Systems Official document for ICAS4201A.

This unit forms part of the following qualifications:
 * Cert IV Websites Qualification in Australia

How this unit will help you
After learning and applying the skills required by this unit you'll be able to demonstrate your skills in:


 * finding and evaluating software that will transfer your files
 * setting it up so that it will connect to your web server
 * creating directories on and moving files onto the server
 * renaming and deleting files on the web server

Ideas for learning the required skills
You will need to find, install and set up an FTP client (although your operating system probably already has an inbuilt FTP client). Google can help you here. Here's a list of some clients you might want to try:

If you use Windows

 * Filezilla - a free FTP client that has all the bells and whistles.
 * FireFTP - An addon for the Firefox web browser (works with all operating systems).
 * WS_FTP - A commercial FTP client for MS Windows that has a free trial version (I think, last time i checked!)

If you use Linux

 * GFTP - comes standard with most Linux distros, has all the features you'd expect in a commercial FTP client.
 * FireFTP - An addon for the Firefox web browser (works with all operating systems).
 * SmartFTP

If you use a Mac
Fetch

Other options
(Maybe just link to the Wikipedia article where people can find more options?)


 * AxY FTP for Windows, Linux and Unix
 * Cftp for Unix
 * Curl for Unix supports FTP, HTTP, Telnet
 * Lftp command-line FTP for Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, Digital UNIX and Linux
 * NFTP command-line FTP for Windows, Linux, OS/2
 * NcFTP client command-line FTP and HTTP URLs for Solaris FreeBSD, AIX and Linux
 * FTP Voyager
 * FTP Explorer
 * CoffeeCup Free FTP
 * FTP Commander

Read through this introduction to FTP. Try the FTP challenges and then practice with your own web server.

If you're enrolled in a formal course you will probably have some space on your school's web server that you can access via FTP. If not, don't despair, there are several free services that grant FTP access. Amongst them:


 * DriveHQ (www.drivehq.com)
 * Awardspace (www.awardspace.com) and
 * Free Web Page Hosting (www.freewebpage.org)

A search on Google may reveal more. Sign up, create a simple web page, upload it and check it out in your web browser.

Ideas for demonstrating this unit
The best way to demonstrate these skills is through uploading the webpages that you create to a web server on the Internet. You may need to demonstrate connecting and uploading, and answer some questions to show that you understand everything about the process.

Grading
If you are demonstrating this unit as part of a formal course, you might find that the unit is graded (meaning you can not only demonstrate your competence, but can also gain a credit or distinction). Your facilitator may already have set criteria that your college uses. If not, here are some ideas for possible credit/distinction activities that you can discuss with your facilitator:


 * Understand the difference between passive and active ftp
 * Compare and contrast several ftp packages
 * Set user, directory and file permissions on Unix and Windows based servers using an FTP client
 * Learn to use FTP via the command line (for those times when you're stuck without software!)
 * Researching and experimenting with the SSH File Transfer Protocol and CVS
 * Learning independently to present high quality work for assessment.

Notes and discrepancies

 * There's so much good free and open source software available for FTP that it's hard to justify the emphasis on 'commercial' packages in this unit.
 * There's no mention in the unit of setting unix directory and file permissions, but this is an essential part of deployment on any unix based web server.