Using a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client to upload your photos to a retailer is easy, and in fact many publishers probably already use FTP to deliver files to your printer. The premise is simple: direct, private uploading and downloading to and from a website.
For demonstration purposes, we’ll use FileZilla, one of the most popular free, open-source FTP clients around. It is available for both PC and Mac.
Using FileZilla
Below is a screen capture of a connection to the ftp.kobobooks.com site through the ACP account:
Simply fill in the information as follows:
- The host name: The host address is exactly like a website address, except instead of an http address, it’s an ftp. For instance when you upload to Kobo, the ftp site is ftp.kobobooks.com, so the address of the site is ftp://ftp.kobobooks.com.
- Your username for the site: Again, each site will be unique. Here we’re uploading to the ACP account, so our username is acp.
- Your password: Assigned by the host.
- The port number: The standard port number for FTP sites is 21. Sometimes your host will specify that you use a different port. For example, SFTP (secure file transfer protocol) sites may use port number 22.
When you’ve filled in these fields, just click the “Quick Connect” button and FileZilla will connect to the site.
The left display is your computer. The right is the site you’re uploading to or downloading from. From here, it’s simply a matter of dragging and dropping files into the correct directory.
To validate the delivery of your transfers you can click on the Successful Transfers tab at the bottom of the page. This page will display a list of all the files that were transferred successfully. Alternatively, if a transfer fails, it will be listed on the Failed Transfers page.