I am about to make a major change in my ISP and I want to take the opportunity to change some obsolete utilities I have been using. One is FTP software to transfer files from my computer to a web site. PC-based, must work with XP and Win 98 as a minimum.
What is your favorite FTP program? Free is best. Hassle-free is good. What are the pluses and minuses of your choice?
Well, I use… WS-FTP.
Works fine on XP for me. Don’t see any reason to change it.
A free and open-source FTP and SFTP client. Fully featured FTP client but with a few bells and whistles, including the ability to transfer files over a secure, encrypted SSH connection. Maybe that’s not necessary for your use but it’s a good option to have.
Filezilla is one of the best, but I find it a bit over-featured.
So whenever I can get away with it, I use an ancient program called FTP Wanderer (which refers to itself as FTP Explorer in some places - I think there might have been a naming clash with a different product).
Trouble is, it doesn’t work with all possible types of connection - with some servers, it appears to connect, but shows an empty server directory - so I use FileZilla instead in those cases.
I use Filezilla, but I find SendTo FTP real handy for simple uploads. It sets an item in your right-click menu that sends the highlighted file to your website via FTP. Real useful if you just have a single updated file to upload.
See http://www.onlythebestfreeware.com/program.asp?program_id=81
I’m still using the same copy of FTP Explorer I got on a CD back in the mid-90s. The book was one of those “How to use the Internet” types of manuals and came with a CD consisting of an ancient version of Netscape, an WYSIWYG HTML editor, a Usenet client, an e-mail client and FTPx. It still meets all of my (rather rare) FTPing needs.
I suggest you check Gizmo Richards’ 46 Best Freeware Utilities List. It has some great choices for free FTP clients.
I use CoreFTP because the last time I reinstalled and couldn’t find a crack for CuteFTP or WS_FTP (they were all pay at the time), I looked up “free ftp,” landed on Core’s site and have never looked back. I’d say I’ve been using it maybe 3 or 4 years.
I don’t know if it’s the best or the worst, but my business relies heavily on FTP (I design Web sites) - although not nearly as much as it used to - and I FTP large and small files quite regularly and it works just fine for me.
Seconded. Use CoreFTP quite a bit to transfer small and mid-sized files to my server, and it works a treat.
Surprised really that we haven’t had any console lovers saying “what do you mean, ‘which FTP program?’ - I just use FTP”…
That’s the one I had planned to replace. Perhaps it’s the version I use – the version isn’t given, it’s so old – but it no longer works properly. Besides only understanding 8-character names, it will transfer only 11 files at a time before erroring out.
This same error happens in Win98 or XP systems and with different IPs sourced at different places, so I thought it might be time to change. Does your version overcome this?
We console lovers have long since graduated to sftp.
I used to use WS_FTP but it sticks stupid logfiles all over the place. I then used CuteFTP but it wasn’t great at queueing, then I tried FireFTP but it was buggy. Finally settled on Filezilla and love it.
Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I’m unfamiliar with Unix or FTP commands, but I can learn and the DOS command line is 2nd nature to me. Can you recommend a site for a good command list, tutorial and hints?
I’ve been using FTP Commander for many years. Basic, no frills, easy to use, and free.
They’ve been around since the early days, but they keep improving their product.
Sorry, not from me - I don’t think I’ve ever used it from the command line.
Another vote for WinSCP. You can even get it as a Portable App for carrying round on a USB stick. SFTP is safer than FTP, and WinSCP works a real treat. In Windows.
Personally, I use Dolphin, the KDE (Linux/Unix) file manager - I just open a remote connection in the file manager I use for local files. Seamless. I am hoping that it will be ported to windows eventually.
Si
Here’s a good guide.
If you’re in an environment where you can’t use any third-party software then the command-line FTP can work out pretty well. If you don’t need to automate transfers then you can use Internet Explorer as well. Just go to Internet Options|Advanced and check the Enable folder view for FTP sites box. It’s no-frills but it works.
For Firefox there’s FireFTP.
For more advanced tasks I’d also go with WinSCP.
I always thought lynx did a reasonably good job. I commonly use ftp as well, though, or wget if I only need one file or want to batch-download a whole directory structure.
I love FireFTP. It’s a Firefox extension.