Unless you have or will be utilizing Frontpage Extensions on your site, you can use the File Manager located in your cPanel Control Panel to view all the directories and files in your account, as well as change permissions for directories and files, create directories, create and edit files, and upload files from your hard drive to your account.
To upload your files to your account without using the File Manager in your Control Panel, you need FTP client software. FTP client software is a piece of software that runs on you computer for uploading files to your site. If you currently do not have one, there are many different FTP clients out there to choose from. For a list of FTP clients please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_FTP_client_software.
If you are not familiar with FTP clients, the process by which files are transferred to the web server is called “FTP” (File Transfer Protocol). You have unlimited access via FTP 24 hours a day. As such, you can create and maintain your web pages on your own computer and upload files to your web site at your leisure.
To use FTP client software you will need three key pieces of information: the hostname (server or address), username and password for the site you wish to access. To access your site, when the FTP client asks for a hostname (server or address) use ftp.yourdomainname.com (or your Server IP Address we sent you until your domain name is indexed by the registry — which usually takes 24 to 48 hours but sometimes can take up to one week). The FTP client will also ask for a username (login name) and password. Enter your account’s username and password. Make sure that Anonymous is NOT checked and Host Type selected is UNIX STANDARD. Also make sure "Passive" mode is NOT checked.
Once logged in, you will see a number of different directories (file folders): e.g., etc, mail, public_ftp, public_ftp, tmp, etc. All of your files and subdirectories go into your public_html directory. If you have any scripts such as CGI's that need to be executable, place them inside the cgi-bin directory that is inside the public_html directory. In your HTML code, link to files in this directory by /cgi-bin/filename.cgi. For text and images files, place in the public_html directory. It's usually helpful to have an "images" directory to keep all your images organized. You will notice we already created one for you when we uploaded your default home page.
REMEMBER — When uploading files:
ASCII vs. Binary
Text-based files get sent in ASCII mode (.txt, .doc, .html, .htm, .shtm, .cgi, etc.)
Non-text based files are binary mode (.jpg, .gif, .exe, .mdb, .zip, pdf, .doc, etc.)
