Configuring the FTP server

Right click on the default FTP server and choose properties. The following window will show up:



In the description field you can change the name of your server to what ever you want. This will appear instead of Default FTP Site.

All FTP connections use port 21 as the default port for connecting to a FTP server but in some cases this port maybe blocked by your ISP in order to prevent you from running your own FTP server. You can get around this problem by simply specifying another port, for example port 22. This port number must however be tagged to your URL otherwise visitors wouldn’t be able to visit your page. For example if the URL to your FTP server is ftp://localhost and you have specified port 22 for FTP connections, then the correct URL would be:

ftp://localhost:22

Make your changes in accordance with the figure above. When you are done here, Click on the next flick called “Security Accounts”:



By default the anonymous connections to your FTP server are allowed. It means that anyone can connect to your FTP server using an FTP client program like WSFTP, CuteFTP etc. The visitors will however not be allowed to download or upload anything to your server. If you want specific users to be able to upload and download stuff from your server then you have to create users and give each user specific permissions for specific folders and files on your FTP server.

Note that for this to work your hard drive must have the NTFS file system. You can read all about file systems and permissions in this article but for now check “Allow anonymous connections” to let users connect to your server.

Under “Messages” you can write down welcome and exit messages for your users.

Now click on “Home Directory”:



Click on “Browse” and give the path to the folder you want to use as the root folder of your FTP server. That is the folder your visitors will be reaching when they connect to your FTP server.

In the above figure above both Read and Write permissions are checked but you should NOT allow Write permissions since this gives all anonymous users to upload stuff to your FTP server and that you certainly don’t want. In the Directory Listing Style you can choose MS-DOS. When you are done click OK to apply the changes.

You can now test your FTP server by writing down the following URL in the address field of your web browser:

ftp://localhost

Don’t forget to add port number if you have changed the default port number. It would then look like this in case you have specified port 22 for FTP connections:

ftp://localhost:22

If you have an ftp client program installed on your system then it will take over and try to connect to your FTP server. You maybe asked for password, don’t give any and connect as an anonymous user.

you can't however reach your FTP server by connecting to localhost:22 from another computer. What you now need is a URL and a URL redirector. You can get both at www.no-ip.com right away and best of all, its free of charge.

The URL you will get will look something like "mypage.no-ip.com" where "mypage" is the name of your page. This URL will be connected to your IP address and in case you have a dynamic IP, that is to say an IP address which changes everytime you connect to the internet, you must download thier Dynamic DNS Update client. This client will keep your IP address updated and make sure the URL to your page connects the requests to the updated IP address.

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Aymal Khan Sapay
Server Administrator
Safis Web

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Installing FTP Server

See Also: Installing a Web Server