FTP Software - Don't buy any !

Did you know that every version of Windows has a built in FTP program? So you don't need to buy some software if you are just looking to perform simple tasks.

I have various clients that are using one and one (www.1and1.co.uk) dedicated windows servers.

One and One really seem to be on the ball these days and are now throwing in backup space on a remote server. I was looking for a quick way to get the backups done and sent the ftp space. I've used scripted FTP before but wondered how many people know about this?

You can use the FTP program that comes with Windows to  perform a number of tasks, such as downloading a copy of your web site each evening. This is done by using an FTP script.

Now my FTP problem is that I want to put files up onto an ftp site...in other words back the files up from my macine to another machine. I'm going to create a script to do it then use the windows command scheduler to run the script in the evening.

Note: the only downside with using FTP in general is that your ftp password is transmitted and stored in clear text over the network. For me this isn't so much of an issue as the backup server is on the same internal network was the web server but if you are using ftp over the Internet you need to be aware that this behaviour happens.

This Microsoft article 96269 shows you how to use the ftp program that comes with windows to automate a file transfer.

ftp -s:script.txt ftp.server.com

The contents of script.txt might look like this:

yourUserName
yourPassword
bin
cd /files
put file.zip
bye