Setting up an FTP connection in My Network Places

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Setting up an FTP connection via the My Network Places area within the Windows XP operating system can be very useful if you wish to simply drag and drop the files from your local hard drive/desktop to your FTP account at a remote location. After setting up an FTP connection you can simply open My Network Places, open your FTP connection, and begin transfering files just as you would with another folder on your computer. This tutorial will show you how it may be done.

Example Situation

Lets imagine that we are dealing with a HostDime website account which is setup under the domain name 'johndoeshosting.com' with the username set as 'johnd' and the password as 'il0vej@ned03'.

Opening My Network Places from Desktop or Start Menu

If you are using a default installation of Windows XP you shouldn't have the My Network Places icon on your desktop. Instead it will be located within your Start Menu. You can open it from here if you wish, or use the instructions below to add it to your desktop. If you already have the icon for 'My Network Places' on your desktop, just open it up and continue reading ahead.

If you would rather use the Classic start menu, and have the My Computer, My Network Places, and My Documents icons on your desktop, do the following:

1. Open up the Control Panel.
2. Select Taskbar and Start Menu.
3. Click on the Start Menu tab at the top of the window.
4. Select the 'Classic Start menu' radio button.
5. Click 'OK' at the bottom of the window.

If you would like to just add only the My Network Places icon on your desktop, do the following:

1. Open up the Control Panel.
2. Double-click on the 'Display' icon.
3. Click on the Desktop tab at the top of the window.
4. Click on the 'Customize Desktop' button at the bottom of the window.
5. Under the 'Desktop Icons' area at the top of the window, place a checkmark next to 'My Network Places'.
6. Click 'OK' at the bottom of the window.
7. Click 'OK' at the bottom of the 'Display Properties' window.

Adding a New Network Place

After you have opened the My Network Places window, you should have a menu in the upper left hand corner which gives you the option of adding a new network place.

After clicking on this link, you will see the following wizard window appear.

Click on the Next button to continue.

In the next window, make sure "Choose another network connection" is selected. Click next again.

Where it asks you for the Internet or network address, you simply need to begin the address with ftp:// followed by the domain name for your website.

Optionally it may be a good idea to place a forward slash after the domain name followed by "public_html". This will make it so that when the FTP connection is made, you will automatically be placed into the public_html directory where your website files are stored within your FTP account. In our example the website is johndoeshosting.com, so we are entering "ftp://johndoeshosting.com/public_html/". Click next.

In the next window, uncheck the "Log on anonymously" checkbox. This will make the username field active so you may enter your username into the field. In our example we have added 'johnd' as the username since it is the cPanel username for the johndoeshosting.com cPanel account. After doing this, again we click Next.

The wizard now asks us to enter a name for the network place. You can enter whatever you wish to identify your FTP account connection. For the example we replaced "public_html on johndoeshosting.com" with just "johndoeshosting.com" as the connection name. Click Next.

This may look like the last step, but its not. Click on the Finish button. Do not worry about the checkbox as we have one more step before this is finished.

Last, the system has to ask for the password to the FTP account before it can connect the first time. If you don't wish to enter the password everytime (and you trust that no one ha access to your computer to access it) go ahead and check "Save Password" and then click on the Log On button.

After this is done, the connection will show up in My Network Places and you can just simply double click on the connection name to open it anytime you wish. All you have to do is copy and paste files back and forth as you would with any other window on your computer locally.

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