In order to get web content from your desktop software and up to your web server, you’ll need to use a tool called FTP (File Transfer Protocol). If you’ve never used FTP before, please take a look at this quick tutorial and screencast.

Birdhouse supports both traditional FTP and SFTP (Secure FTP). For most purposes, we strongly recommend using SFTP whenever possible. Here are a few of our favorite SFTP client applications:

Mac OS and Windows: Dreamweaver MX 2004 or later (commercial).

Mac OS X: Transmit (commercial) or Cyberduck (free) or Fugu (free)

Mac OS Classic: MacSFTP (shareware)

Linux: SafeTP (free)

Windows: WinSCP (free) or WS_FTP Pro (version 7.6 or later) or
WtsFtp (shareware) or AbleFTP (shareware)

For SFTP access, configure your client to connect to yourdomain.com, using your master account name with Birdhouse (the same username and password you use to access cPanel).

Typical FTP/SFTP configuration dialog. This example shows Transmit for OS X; other applications will be displayed differently, but the basics are always the same. Servername, username, and password are required.

Once logged in, upload your content to the public_html folder. Your homepage should be named index.html.

Uploading content is generally a simple drag-and-drop affair. In this classic two-pane view, files on your computer are shown on the left, files on the server are shown on the right. Navigate the server view to public_html and drag files into place. You can also usually drag directly off the Desktop, Finder, or Explorer directly to the server.

Once index.html is in place in your public_html folder, and assuming DNS has resolved, your site will be available at yourdomain.com.

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