Remote Publishing Your Site Using FTP

There may be a time when you need to publish your site from your hosting server to YOUR computer either because you don't have a copy of the site on your computer or you are taking over a site from someone else.

First, create a new empty site on your computer. See Create New Website.

Next, click Site > Publishing > Click the Add a Publishing Destination link that appears on your screen. The Connection Settings dialog box will appear.

Add a Publishing Destination

You will need your ftp address, username, password, and the directory to which you will publish to. You should get this from your hosting provider.

 There are several things to do on the Connection Settings dialog box that pops up. 

1. "Name" - Type the name of the site, i.e., Expression Web Tutorials.
2. "Connection Type" -  select FTP, SFTP, FTPS, FrontPage Server Extensions, WebDav, or File System.  In this example, select FTP
3. "Location" - type the Internet address, including the protocol, of the remote website that you want to publish folders and files to — for example, ftp://www.your-domain.com  http://www.your-domain.com.
4. "Directory"  —  the folder/directory on the server you are publishing the files to.
   
   NOTE: In the case of 1and1 Linux servers, it would be whichever directory you have pointed that domain to.
   
   NOTE: In the case of BlueHost, you may enter your domain name or the IP address of your server. Enter your ftp directory. If this is your main domain (the domain you opened your account with) enter public_html. If you are publishing to an addon domain, you would type public_html/addon-domain-directory.
   
   
5. "Credentials User name" - your User Name
6. "Credentials Password" - your password

Click 'Add.'

Once you click the Add button, you will automatically be connected to the site.

WARNING: If the site you are trying to transfer includes any of the files used by FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) you will see the warning screen shown below.

Click OK.

The left-hand side of your screen will be blank. The right-hand side of the screen will show the files on the remote server.

Publish the Files/Folders

To publish the files from the Remote Server to YOUR computer, highlight each file/folder on the right hand side of the screen. Then click the middle arrow between the two panes to move the files.

WARNING: If any of the folders on the server contain any of the FPSE files (_vti_cnf) you will receive the warning screen shown below.

Clicking OK will stop the publishing process. The only thing transferred will be the folders but they will be empty. None of the actual pages will be transferred. At this point you have two choices:

1. Delete each of the _vti_cnf folders from each of the folders and subfolders OR
2. Transfer only the actual pages from the site and use a 3rd party ftp program to transfer to folders and contents. OR use the FTP program to transfer the entire site.

Once you have the site on your hard drive, you are then free to work on it and publish the changes back to the server.

HELPFUL HINT: If you use a 3rd party ftp program to transfer the files/folders to your computer, EW is going to mark all of the files and folders in conflict with the remote server site the first time you go to publish. For that reason, it may be easier/quicker to transfer the actual pages using EW. This is especially true if it is a large site.

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