How to upload files to a website

The usefulness of every website depends on the content of the website. People are not just interested in the quality of a web hosting service or the reputation of your web host. They are more interested in the content you offer through your website because that is what brings benefits, either in the form of learning, getting a service, purchasing a product or enjoying an application. Quality content are not just important for human visitors, they are also what search engines love about websites.

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Every website owner wants to understand how to upload files. This will be necessary for the purposes of redesigning the website, updating the website or simply changing certain elements like images.

In this tutorial, we will show you the different ways to upload to our website control panel, also known as cPanel.

1. Uploading With cPanel Filemanager

The cPanel upload tool is one of the fastest means to upload a website. It is however good for file upload and probably the fastest means for file upload:

To use this tool, follow these steps:

  1. Login to your website control panel. This will usually be accessed through yourdomainname.com/cpanel. You will authenticate with a username and password.
  2. Once you are successfully logged in, click on FileManager. This will be found under files and appears at the top left position if you are using the Paper Lantern theme.
  3. Within the filemanager, there is a top menu. Click on the “upload” button. A dialog box opens. Select the file you want to upload from the location within your local computer and click open to upload the file. Once the upload is complete, it will indicate a 100 percent completion on the task bar and the bar will turn green.
  4. You may refresh to your uploaded file.

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2. How to upload a folder from Filemanager

You can upload the content of a folder using the cPanel filemanager tool by following these steps:

Requirement: You will require a utility tool like WinRar or WinZip to be installed on your local computer to be able to upload the content of a folder.

  1. Use your utility tool to zip your folder. That will convert your entire folder content into a single zipped file.
  2. Login to your website control panel. This will usually be accessed through yourdomainname.com/cpanel. You will authenticate with a username and password.
  3. Once you are successfully logged in, click on FileManager. This will be found under files and appears at the top left position if you are using the Paper Lantern theme.
  4. Within the filemanager, there is a top menu. Click on the “upload” button. A dialog box opens. Select the file you have zipped from the location within your local computer and click open to upload the file. Once the upload is complete, it will indicate a 100 percent completion on the task bar and the bar will turn green.
  5. You will now have to refresh the filemanager by clicking the refresh button to be able to view the zipped file you have uploaded.
  6. Highlight the uploaded file with a simple tap.
  7. Click on extract, this will open up the zipped file and convert it to a normal folder within your filemanager.
  8. You may want to delete the uploaded zipped file from your filemanager. It is always good to delete such files and any other file not in use as a security measure.

3. Using an FTP Software for Upload

A File Transfer Protocol software like Filezilla and Ipswich FTP are good for file transfer to your live server. The procedure for uploading files using FTP is essentially the same for all FTP software.

With an FTP software, you can upload individual files as well as a set of files all at the same time. You will also be able to upload all files contained in a folder by simply uploading the folder. Usually this kind of upload is not possible with using the filemanager as explained above.

You will require the following information to be able to upload to your web server using an FTP software:

Server name: enter your domain name

Server address: enter domain name

Username: enter account username as indicated in your “New Account Information”. If you cannot remember, simply request if from your web host.

Password: Enter password as provided in your “New Account Information”. If cannot have access to the information, request that it be resent to you.

That will be all for you to be able to transfer files to our live server.

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4. Limitations of Using the cPanel Filemanager For Uploads

Although the cPanel filemanager is an excellent feature for uploading files in cPanel, it has some limitations.

  • It can only upload files and not folders. The implication is that you have to create the folders and then upload files into them. Where there are folders and sub-folders inside a folder, it becomes a problem, becomes very cumbersome and sometimes very time consuming if possible to use the cPanel filemanager for uploading files.
  • Upload limits. You will have limits to the file size you can upload using filemanager. This limit can however be removed by your server administrator.

Solution

The appropriate solution to deal with first problem (trouble with folder upload) is to zip the folder and upload the zipped file. When upload is complete, you can unzip the file and use.

5. Problems With Uploading Your Website With FTP Software

The most common problem with publishing with FTP is incorrect credentials from you web hosts. This has been found to be the cause of problems with 99% of users.

Entering an incorrect Path is a common cause of publishing problems in with FTP clients. Some common site paths may include:

/
/httpdocs/
/www/
/public_html/

This is by no means an exhaustive list and paths can vary greatly between different hosts, so if you're still experiencing issues, please consult your webhost's online help to determine the Path required to upload to the correct folder.

You may even want to contact your webhosts directly and ensure that they have not made any recent changes to the server which may have affected your settings and that you are still within your upload quota.

5. Different Server Configurations

Let us tae the case of Rapidwaever. RapidWeaver has a number of options to configure publishing - particularly if you’re using FTPS uploading. Please try the each of the options available, as some hosting providers require specific settings. Due to the nature of how FTP works, RapidWeaver cannot reliably detect the correct settings that you should use.

6. Check for Limits on Concurrent Connections

If your host limits the number of connections which can be made to your server, you can set RapidWeaver 7 to use a smaller number of connections when publishing.

7. "“Couldn’t connect to your FTP server” Error

If RapidWeaver consistently displays this message when publishing, try disabling Extended Passive Mode – which is enabled by default in the FTP Publishing Setup.

To do this, show the Publishing Setup window (Command-K), select the settings button next to the FTP Protocol field, then choose to disable the Use Extended Passive Mode option.
Publishing Issue Checklist

Make sure your publishing details are correct, use the "Reveal" password option to check it's entered in correctly. This is one of the most common errors.
If you're using FTP, the "Mode" should usually be set to "Extended Passive (Default)" (Try both when testing).
If you're using SFTP make sure there is a path in the Path directory, such as "/".
Try entering your FTP credentials into another FTP client (Forklift, Fetch, Transmit, CyberDuck, Interarchy, or YummyFTP), and see if you can make a connection. If this also fails it probably means your credentials are incorrect. You should contact your host for support and to check your ftp details.
If the "Test" button reports that your details are correct, but you're still having issues publishing try updating the Path by using the "Browse" button. This can often fix any publishing issues you may be having.

If Publishing and Export seem slow…

If you have a large site, especially if your site uses the blog page style and has a lot of entries we'd recommend switching off "CSS Consolidation" and "Minify CSS and Javascript". These options can be found in the "Advanced…" settings sheet under "General".

RapidWeaver will no longer have to process every page to consolidate and minify things, export and publish should be significantly quicker.
If your connection keeps timing out…

It could be something slowing down the connection to the FTP server. It could be something on your connection, or it could be the server itself. It probably isn't an issue with RapidWeaver.


Open Terminal.app on your Mac and type ping yourserver.com (where yourserver.com is the value you entered in the "Host" field of the Publishing screen), then press enter.

If these take a long time to return, or they time out completely, you'll want to speak to your web host.

Another test would be to try ping 8.8.8.8 - that's Google's server, and it's always pretty quick. If that returns quickly, but the one to your server returns slowly, then it must be your server. If they both return slowly, then there's something going on with your connection.
Error Message when Exporting

If you’re seeing an error message when exporting your site, this may mean that there’s a problem with either an addon or a resource in your project. If an error message appears consistently when exporting a particular page, take a look at the page - are there any resources missing, or a particular stack that may be causing a problem?


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