Telnet And FTP Tools
FTP Program
An FTP program will allow you to transfer files between computers. The FTP (File Transfer Protocol) protocol is part of the standard Unix tools and you will use it in later lessons to upload your webpages to your webhosting computer.
If you have Arachnophilia - you don't really need one as it can upload the files for you using the 'Update Website' function in the 'Tools' menu. Arachnophilia makes things much simpler because it tracks which files have changed since the last upload for you as well.
Despite this, I recommend that you do get a separate FTP program because it will give you an Explorer like interface to your webhosting account - and this is often useful, There's one which stands out as superb: SmartFTP...
- SmartFTP - The best. The layout is a bit busy - there's so much info packed in, but it is very powerful and easy to use when you get the hang of it.
- EZ-FTP - Another good one.
Telnet Program
Telnet is another Unix protocol. This one allows you to run a terminal.
You need to use a terminal when you want to communicate with a Unix computer... All Unixes have the capability to take input from a keyboard, and display output to a screen. This combination of keyboard and screen is a 'terminal'.
When you run your telnet program, you'll get an 80x24 character, text-only window where you see, first of all, a 'login' prompt. This is a 'terminal'. You login with your username & password, and then you have access to the Unix 'command line' or 'shell'.
INFO:
Back in the old days, instead of having a PC on every desk, most companies had one 'mainframe' - a large powerful computer - that would support tens or hundreds of users. Each of those users would have a 'computer terminal' on their desk that connected to the mainframe via the telnet protocol.
These days, you use telnet software which runs on a PC and emulates the terminals of yesteryear.
Unix has it's own GUI - Graphical User Interface - (like Windows for the PC) called X-Windows, and you can get terminals which display graphics as well as just text - called 'X-terminals'. Webhosting computers rarely have X-Windows installed because webserving doesn't require it. |
Once logged in, you can then type Unix commands at the command line prompt, Unix will do what you ask, and then give you a result. Telnet and Unix are covered in detail in a later lesson.
SSH is a protocol which provides a more secure login for telnet. It hides the username and password by encrypting them before transmission. Most webhosts which provide telnet also handle SSH, some require it! Both programs below support SSH.
The two best telnet programs by far are:
Both are very flexible, user-friendly and are freeware. You can have any colors or fonts, you can resize the window beyond 80x24 (and they automatically adjust the display settings at the Unix end!), you can specify start-up parameters on the command line (so they log into your host automatically)...
For a list of SSH clients avaliable visit freessh.org
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