Uploading a website is one of the very first steps novice users have to take in order to publish their creation on the Internet. This tutorial will provide a generalized example on how to upload a website using one of two basic tools – an FTP client or cPanel’s File Manager.
What you’ll need
Before you begin this guide you’ll need the following:
- Access to the control panel of your hosting account
- Your website’s files (preferably compressed in a .zip or .tar.gz format archive)
- (Optional) An FTP client and FTP login details of your hosting account
Option 1 — Uploading Your Website via FTP
Some users prefer using an FTP client, such as FileZilla, SmartFTP, CoreFTP, or any other in order to upload their website. In this example, we will use Filezilla.
Firstly, you will need to get your FTP details. These will have been sent to you in the Your Account Information email and locating the Uploading Your Website section.
Open FileZilla and input your FTP connection details into the fields at the top of the program, then click Quickconnect.
Once you are connected to the FTP server, use the file browser on the LEFT side of the program to find your website’s files on your computer. After you have found your website’s files, use the file browser on the RIGHT side to open your public_html directory on the hosting server. Once you have done this, you can simply drag-and-drop files from left to right and they will be uploaded to the server.
(OPTIONAL) Similarly, you can upload a compressed archive via FTP by dragging-and-dropping from left to right. You will also need to extract it via File Manager. Refer to the “Option 2 — Uploading Your Website via cPanel’s File Manager” part of the tutorial for instuctions on how to extract archives via File Manager.
Your website files should now be uploaded to the public_html directory and you should now be able to access your website via your website’s URL. Let’s visit our website and see if we managed to upload our WordPress files via FTP.
Success! We see the default WordPress installation page, which means we successfully uploaded our website and we are now able to proceed with the WordPress installation.
Option 2 — Uploading Your Website via cPanel’s File Manager
Log in to the cPanel of your hosting account and follow the instructions below:
Click on the File Manager icon, located under the Files category.
Once inside the File Manager, open the public_html directory.
Click Upload after entering the public_html directory.
You can click “Select File” to select a singular file, or simply drag-and-drop your file to the outlined area.
In this example, we will find and upload a default WordPress installation archive, wordpress.zip.
Once the upload is complete, return to the File Manager and you will see the uploaded archive in your public_html directory. Right click the archive and select Extract to extract the archive.
If you receive a prompt asking to specify the location the archive should be extracted to, make sure to specify /public_html.
The archive is now extracted, all files should now be located inside public_html. Navigate back to public_html and see if the files were moved successfully.
Your website should now be fully uploaded and accessible via your website’s URL. All that remains is to access your website and check if everything works correctly. Simply type in your domain name in your browser, such as http://www.domainname.com/, and check if your website works to your satisfaction. In our example, we see the default WordPress installation page, which means we successfully uploaded our website and now we are able to proceed with installing WordPress.
Conclusion
Congratulations, you have just learned how to upload a website. As you may see, you can upload a lot of files at once via an FTP program more easily, however, each file will be uploaded one-by-one. As a result, it may take a long time for each file to be uploaded separately, so it is still strongly advised to create a compressed archive of your files before uploading them.
On the other hand, the File manager is useful for uploading one or two files quickly, since you do not need a separate program for the File manager to work and can update your website on-the-fly, while working on other tasks inside your hosting control panel.
