Problems with uploading websites

Zach Zimmer · September 15, 2019

I’m trying to upload a website to the web using filezilla.All the instructions I could find on the internet about filezilla generally told me to open a new site in site manager and enter my domain name in the “Host” field.And of course, all with only one example site.So I can’t figure out how it’d be like when I upload more sites.If I follow those instructions,doesn’t it mean that all the websites I upload to the web will have the completely same url because they all share the same domain name?!I know this is pretty ridiculous and impossible,but as a person who hasn’t uploaded any website before,that’s all I could imagine!So can anyone show me how to exactly upload each of my websites with a distinct and valid url just like the normal ones we see on the internet?(I know my urls will always be followed by stuff like myWebHostProviderName.com if I didn’t purchase custom url service or something,but I’m not talking about that.That’s fine for me.)

mariushm · September 16, 2019

When you buy shared hosting for your website from a company, the domain name you have (ex zachzimmer.com) is associated to an IP address and a web server owned by the company who gives you the shared hosting.

The shared hosting company will email you a username and a password and you use those to transfer files, or to login in into a control panel. From the control panel, you can create username + password pairs that you can then use to connect and transfer files to your website.

Filezilla allows you to use a system called FTP to connect to that server and transfer files to the server. You enter your domain name or a server name the hosting company gives you (for example server123.fancyhosting.com ) , the username, password and sometimes the port number.

Once you're connected you'll see a list of files and folders on the remote computer.

Most often, you'll have a folder called [your domain name / [public html | html | default | main ] or something like that.... anything you transfer in that folder will be directly accessible as yourdomainname.tld / yourfile.extension so if you put there index.html and then type in browser yourdomainname.tld/index.html the web server will serve the file.

From the hosting control panel you would be able to create subdomains for your default domain (ex music.yourdomain.tld) and the control panel software should create a folder, something like [ your domain name ] / subdomain / ... which would be different than the default folder.

If the shared hosting allows multiple websites/domains then you add the domain in the control panel and the control panel software should create another folder branch : [ my other domain name ] / [ public html | html | default | main ] or in some cases, you can simply add them like they're subdomains of the original website.

If you want to experiment with shared hosting and domains, I'd suggest paying around 17$ for one year of their cheapest shared hosting (it's ~30$ after the first year) and they also give you a free .website domain name (for the first year, it will cost a few dollars a year to keep it afterwards). Here's the link for shared hosting: long namecheap link (not affiliate link, not making any money recommending it)

If you don't want .website domain, you can buy others from them, there's domain names for as little as 1$ for the first year: https://www.namecheap.com/domains/#pricing

Anyway, the shared hosting account allows up to 3 websites and a few subdomains for websites and there's a nice simple to use control panel and tutorials that even an absolute beginner should be able to do stuff.There's also some ready made scripts you can "install" with a few clicks from the control panel...