Tech Tips for BHSEC Students

The first “web basic” I want to impart is to make backups of all your work! For this you’ll need an FTP client.

FireFTP is, IMHO, the simplest ftp client. It works on osx/win/linux. It’s opensource (”free as in beer and free as in speech”). It’s a firefox addon, so you’ll need firefox. Go ahead and bookmark it so you can easily find it. On the top left look for a new toolbar with: Manage Accounts>New…

Ok> then select “Connect”. Notice it changes to “Disconnect”. The left hand side is the filesystem of the computer you’re working on right now, the right hand side is the remote server you’re editing. You don’t need the left hand side (you can drag/drop from outside firefox) but I recommend you use an ftp client so you can easily keep backups while you edit web pages… and the left hand side makes copying entire folders much easier.

I recommend you first make a backup of the entire site. It won’t take long, websites are often very small in size.
Next, I recommend that before you edit any file, you make a copy and name it something like filename.html-bkup01. Then, each time you edit the file again, increase the number eg bkup02.

Occasionally I need an sftp client, which fireftp isn’t, and I use filezilla. On OSX I hear you can use fugu or cyberDuck.