Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

HTML

William Davis
William Davis
10,070 Points

Can't upload files to server

In the "How to make a website" course we used to use webhostingforstudents.com as our host for the website, but now we use another one.

Unfortunately, I still use webhostingforstudents.com and I don't remember where I should upload the files.

Could someone please help me out?

I have the following folders:

  • etc
  • logs
  • mail
  • public_ftp
  • public_html
  • tmp
  • www/cgi-bin

Thanks :)

2 Answers

Kevin Roundtree
Kevin Roundtree
4,575 Points

if you want to publish your site, upload to public_html.

I recommend to never upload anything directly to your public_html file folder. Looks like public_ftp folder been setup or you can make another folder call yourname_ftp. You will most likely need a FTP client I personally like Core FTP but FileZilla is very popular. You probably will need setup a FTP user account with your server space I have not used that hosting service but if they use cpanel you will need setup a FTP account.

Kevin Roundtree
Kevin Roundtree
4,575 Points

Jeffrey...I understand your concern, but your are creating more work by having to move files once they have been uploaded to another directory. If testing is done on a local machine, which is what I recommend, then files should be uploaded/published directly into public_html.

Hey Kevin,

If you have a non-complex website that basic html, JavaScript, scripting (PHP, Python, ruby) then I can see that it would not be harmful to just upload it directly to your public_html. I would only upload a site to the public_html if it was first time I was uploading anything to that server space. I like to make sure that my file structure is correct and I am not overriding anything I don’t want to have overridden.

Once you add in developing CMS and or template engines I become more paranoid and I like to make sure that everything is uploaded correctly to server. I like to implement the SQL server or whatever database system you will use prior to porting the site to public. I would never update a site directly by FTP upload to the public_html so much can go wrong and cause hours of trouble shooting. So the extra 10-15 min to try save myself hours later is worth it.

I do agree on your point only if it non-complex website with initial upload.

Kevin Roundtree
Kevin Roundtree
4,575 Points

Still not sure I completely agree with your approach, but to each his own :). Remember the context of the question is related to "How to Build a Website" which is a beginner course with static HTML files.