FTP Server Made Easy

Setting up an basic ftp server is pretty useful and not that hard to do.  An ftp server allows you to access your files on the computer you have the server set up from any computer that has internet connection. All you need is a FTP Daemon which you can find by searching for FTP Daemon or FTP Server.  One version of an FTP Daemon is War FTP for Windows which provides a BBS-like Windows  interface with UNIX security and best of all it's free.

To set up the server, just download the application from the above link, open the downloaded file and chick 'INSTALL'.

This will take you through some menus for installing the program, these menus is pretty much self explanatory. But here are some important notes:

    Choose Custom install if you want to choose what components you want to install. I recommendation is to remove the Database component.

    You can choose if you want the FTP server to run as a system service which mean that the server will launch onstartup and close at shutdown.

    For security reasons, do not use your administrator password because the sysadmin password, the password you are entering, can be seen in text format in one of the configuration files.

When the program is installed, you can now open the program and add some users, accounts that can access your server with a username and password. 

Chick on 'USER MANAGER' located on the toolbar which open up a menu where you can add users and edit properties. Here are the basic step to set up a user:

1) right click 'SYSTEM' and choose 'ADD CLASS'

2) enter name for class, example: users

3) right chick the class you created above and choose 'ADD USER', enter name and password

4) chick on the user you created and choose the user type from the right hand side

5) chick on the 'SECURITY' menu on the bottom right and then chick on 'FILE ACCESS'

6) right chick in the top menu and choose 'NEW'

7) add the new path and press enter, this is where you regulate the user's access and control.  In other words what folder the user can access and what they can do while in the folder.  The folder options are found in the middle menu.

There are more options, I recommend that you go through some of the other menus.

Now the server is set up and you can try to access the server with an FTP client program, ex. WS_FTP LE for Windows.  All you need is your username, password, and IP address, found by going to 'Control Panel' => 'Network' or by looking on the right hand menu of the WAR FTP program.

Another useful application is provided by No-IP.com, which allows you to assign a static name to your IP address, so when you access your server, you can enter the static name in place of your IP address in the host name/address entry.  This is useful because it is easier to remember a name then to remember you IP address.

This service is free, so take a look at it; It also offers an application for redirection of websites.  If your URL is long, then a shorter host name can be used to redirect to the current site.

Here is a brief description of their service taken from http://www.no-ip.com/services/page/free/dynamicdns:

We currently offer dynamic and static DNS and URL redirection services under various top level domains. You can run your own server and use one of our domain names.

Dynamic DNS:
No-IP^Free includes our dynamic DNS service. Access your home/work computer(s) using an easy to remember name instead of long hard to remember (sometimes changing) IP address. Our dynamic DNS service associates a static hostname with your static or dynamic IP address. If you have a dynamic IP address we also offer a free update client that keeps track of your changing IP address. When your IP address changes it notifies our DNS server of the change, keeping your static hostname linked up to your dynamically assigned IP address! Additionally, if you don't care for any of our free domains you can use your own by upgrading to No-IP⁺.

Web Redirection:
No-IP^Free also includes free web redirection under the hopto.org domain, which allows you to get rid of your long URL. For example http://somesite.com/users/myname/mywebpages/ can be accessed by simply typing http://myname.hopto.org/.

What does No-IP^Free include?

• Unlimited sub-domains under No-IP's domain pool
• Unlimited web redirects
• Accept mail using MX records
• Free dynamic update client

REFERENCES

WS FTP LE diagram taken from http://cter.ed.uiuc.edu/cter2/documents/wsftp/using_wsftp.html

WAR FTPD diagrams taken from http://warftpd.userve.co.uk/

AUTHORS

NETCON GROUP: