Basic Guide to FTP and Web Space

Welcome to the Freeola Internet customer support pages. This guide is designed to help you identify the best method to access your webspace to create or update a website. For more internet help topics please visit our main Support Page.

The method used to create or update a website will depend on your choice of package. If you would like to create a new website, you can get unlimited web hosting with Freeola Web Hosting. Alternatively, you can use our RQS website builder to easily design and build a website online, without the need to upload or create any files yourself.

Once set-up, settings can be managed via your MyFreeola Control Panel. Here you can set-up an address for your site, using your own domain name. If you have already signed-up for a Freeola service, please read on for instructions on uploading your site.

Freeola Web Hosting Users

Freeola Web Hosting offers unlimited web hosting and a number of advanced optional features on our latest servers. Freeola Web Hosting subscribers can access their web space to upload files from anywhere in the world. Please see section two for simple instructions on uploading files to your website folder via FTP.

RQS Website Builder Users

RQS allows you to design, create and host a website instantly via your web browser. Designed to be used quickly without any need for technical knowledge, there is nothing to download or upload. Freeola RQS subscribers can update their web sites by launching the RQS  Website Builder in MyFreeola.

The instructions on uploading via FTP below do not apply to RQS sites.

Unlimited Webspace Users

Freeola offers all of our legacy internet connection users unlimited free webspace. This service is no longer available, but all current internet customers receive £12 'Money Back' each month for use on our hosting and e-mail services.

In order to actually put your web pages onto the Freeola server you will be required to use a process known as FTP, which stands for File Transfer Protocol. Once you've created your web site on your computer you will need an FTP-enabled program to upload the files. There are standalone FTP programs, such as CuteFTP or Filezilla, and some web publishing programs, like FrontPage, which have basic FTP clients built-in.

We've provided set-up guides to the more popular software below:

Upload Instructions for Filezilla
Upload Instructions for Cyberduck
Upload Instructions for CuteFTP

Upload via MyFreeola Web Interface

Regardless of which program you use for FTP, you will need some important settings, these are outlined briefly below but all the information needed can be found by selecting My Websites from the left-hand menu within your MyFreeola account.

FTP Server Address

The FTP Server address will vary in format depending of the type of hosting service you have with Freeola. For legacy servers, this will be in the format of freeolawebX.freeola.net, VIP Hosting subscribers would be in the format of vipX.freeola.net and SSD Hosting subscribers would use ftp.yourdomain.com (where yourdomain.com is replaced by your website address).

This information can be confirmed in the My Websites section of MyFreeola.

FTP Server User ID

This will begin with either sr, vip or cp depending on the service you are subscribed to. Again, this information can be confirmed in the My Websites section of MyFreeola.

FTP Server Password

This is the password connected to your FTP username and should be confirmed at the same time as the above information.

When you first connect to the FTP server, depending on the program you are using, you are placed into a directory called your root directory. There should be a series of error and access files (which can be ignored) within this directory, along with a folder called htdocs or public_html. Double click this folder within your FTP client to show the contents of this directory. Any files dropped inside this directory will be accessible from the World Wide Web, so this is the place you want to put your web files.

If you placed a file in the folder called mypage.html, it would be visible to the whole world via the Internet address www.yourdomain.com/mypage.html.

You can place more folders inside this folder. So, if you placed a file called mypage.html in a folder called mypages inside the folder, it would be visible to the whole world via the Internet address www.yourdomain.com/mypages/mypage.html.

The Freeola hosting servers are case-sensitive which means that if you upload a page called myPaGe.html into the folder, you would have to reference (or link to) it that same way. For example, www.yourdomain.com/myPaGe.html would work fine but www.yourdomain.com/mypage.html would report a missing page error (because the server is looking for myPaGe.html which just doesn't exist).

If somebody tries to access your site in the standard way, by typing www.yourdomain.com into their browser address bar, the server will look for a page called index.html or index.php in the htdocs or public_html directory. Therefore, index.html or index.php is what you should always call the first (index) page you want people to see when they type your web site address.

The Freeola servers allow you to use the programming/scripting language PHP for advanced web pages. This is a major benefit and there is no extra charge for this powerful service. Filenames need to end with .php for PHP processing to take place. If your first (index) page requires PHP processing be sure to use index.php as the filename. The PHP configuration of the servers is described in more detail on our PHP Information Page.