Technical @ Updates

here are many FTP clients available but many do not know that you can use Windows Explorere to browse an FTP location. This tutorial shows how to connect to a remote FTP server from Windows Explorer. This is specifically for connecting to the Windows FTP server that comes as part of the Internet Information Services (IIS)component on Windows 2000/2003/2008.

First, you must set your browser to NOT use "Passive" FTP mode or it will not be able to get the list of directories. To do so, go to Internet Explorer and choose Tools -> Internet Options.

Select the Advanced tab and make sure that Use Passive FTP (for firewall and DSL modem compatibility) is NOT checked.

Now open Windows Explorer and in the Address bar (NOTE: If you do not see the Options bar, right-click in the "gray" area next to the toolbars and make sure Address Bar is checked. Now enter the address to your FTP server and don't forget to start it with "ftp://" so Windows knows that you want to use the FTP protocol to connect to this URL.

A Login box will open after a short connection wait. In the dialog, enter your User name and Password to the FTP site (if your FTP supports anonymous acces, you can just check the "Log on anonymously" box). You can also choose to save your password for future connections. Now click Log On.

You will now be connected after a short duration while Windows negotiates the connection. The really nice thing is now you can drag/drop or copy/paste any file from your hard drive directly into this folder and windows will automatically handle uploading it to the FTP location with a nice progress bar.

he following is a list of the steps you need to perform to configure and enable the built-in Windows 2003 server. Before you start, you need to make sure that you actually have the FTP server installed. Depending on what server role you selected during the Windows 2003 server install process, you may or may not have FTP installed.

To check if the FTP server is installed, in the Control Panel, go to Add/Remove programs -> Add/Remove Windows Components. Then make sure Application Server is checked. Click the Details button and make sure Internet Information Services (IIS) is checked. Clicked Details on this again and make sure File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Service is checked. If not, check all of these and click OK to install them.

To enable the FTP service, go to the start menu -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

Tree open your server in the Internet Information Services list. Here my server is called "DEDICATED". Then tree open FTP Sites and right-click Default FTP Site (Stopped). Click Properties from the context menu.

On the dialog, choose the Security Accounts tab. Make sure to uncheck Allow anonymous connections. We don't want to allow anonymous access to the FTP server or we will have spammers, porn-servers, and who knows what else on here in a matter of days. We only want to allow authenticated user accounts to connect.

When you uncheck this box, you will see a dialog like this. Basically, this is just telling you that since you don't want to allow anonymous access, you will have to login with a UserName and Password. Since FTP is not a secure protocol, these credentials will be passed in clear text and there is a remote possibility that someone could see the credentials. In other words, this is saying, make sure that you don't use base windows accounts that you want to be secure. I recommend using a dummy ftp account that you change on a regular basis instead. Just click Yes on this dialog.

On the Home Directory tab, set the path to where you want your FTP files to be placed. NOTE: By default the path is set to inetpub\ftproot. If you want to allow users to create directories and add files instead of just downloading, make sure the Write box is checked. Then click OK to apply all these changes.

Now we want to start our FTP service. Right-click the Default FTP Site (Stopped) in the tree view and select Start to run the FTP server.

Setting Up FTP Directories & Permissions

The previous tasks are all you need to do if you want to just put files in the mail FTP directory. But sometimes you want to set up specific directories for users that actually put the files in different directories than the default directory. The way you do this is to set up a "pointer" directory in your default inetpub\ftproot that will just be an empty folder (FTP Service requires this for a virtual directory). Here, I created a new folder in my default FTP root folder called "MyFtpFolderPointer".

Now, we create a folder where we actually want our files to be placed when they are uploaded/downloaded. So I put a folder in the C:\ drive and called it "MyNewFtpDirectory". This is the place where the FTP files will actually go and the folder we created in the previous step will point to this folder.

Now go back to the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and right-click the Default FTP Site. Choose New -> Virtual Directory... to start the virtual directory wizard.

Click Next to start the wizard.

Name your alias for this virtual directory the EXACT same name you named the Virtual Directory folder we created in the FTP root since this is the one we want to point to the C:\ drive folder. So here, we name our Virtual Directory "MyFtpFolderPointer". Click Next.

Now we tell this virtual directory what it's actual path should be. So point this path to the folder where you actually want the FTP files to go. It can be any path you want. Here we put the path to our folder on C:\MyNewFtpDirectory. Click Next.

If you want users to be able to both download and upload files to this FTP directory, check both the Read and Write boxes. Click Next.

Click Finish to complete the wizard and apply the virtual directory settings.

There are a few other things you might need to:

• Check your Firewall rules. By default, FTP used Port 21 so you will need make sure that your Windows Firewall (if that is what you are using) is configured to allow Port 21 for FTP.
• Create a new user account that is for FTP only to be used to login to your FTP server.