NCIA Support

Uploading Commercial Homepages

To get your webpage to NCIA (or make changes to your existing website)
you will need a FTP program to upload the files to the server.

Here are a couple of free FTP programs you can download:

Windows users: Filezilla
Mac Users: Fetch

*If you have downloaded a .zip file and cannot open it, you will need to download & install a decompression program like WINZIP

To edit the html files (or to create new pages in your existing website)
you will need a text editor.

Here are a couple of free text editors you can download:

Programmers File Editor
Arachnophilia

What address should I FTP my files to?

If you requested to be on a UNIX server (default):
- FTP Hostname: web1.ncia.net

If you requested to be on a Windows server:
- FTP Hostname: wwwftp.ncia.net

*If you are unsure of what server you are hosted on, call 603-752-1250 or email webmaster@ncia.net and we will help you.

What is all this HTML stuff? Can't you just show me the "easy" way to do it?
Learning HTML is not that difficult once you understand the basic concepts.
Due to time constraints, we simply don't have the time to teach everyone how the write HTML.

Here are some pretty good HTML links:

   W3C Getting started with HTML
   htmlgoodies.com
   webmonkey
   A Simple Guide to HTML
   Help Building HTML Pages
   HTMLSource
   Introduction to HTML
   HTML Code Tutorial
   davesite.com Interactive Tutorial
   NCSA Beginners Guide To HTML

A common mistake for the NT server is to put a dot in "wwwftp." If you type in "www.ftp" you will NOT be given access to your website.

Can I use Frontpage to do my uploads?
Yes, NCIA supports Frontpage extensions on our NT servers. If you plan to use Frontpage for your uploads you'll need to contact us at webmaster@ncia.net.

Do you have a username and password for FTP yet?
If you haven't been given a username and password then you'll need to contact us. You can email webmaster@ncia.net or call 603.752.1250 if you need to find out the username and password for your commercial site.

What is this "Profile Name" that my FTP program is asking me for?
The Profile Name is just a way that your FTP program helps you organize entries for the different places that you may be sending files to. This has no impact on whether you can log into our server but if you give it a logical name that makes sense to you, the next time you're ready to upload you can select that entry and your settings will already be there.

Most file transfer programs have the ability to switch to PASV mode. This is a setting that usually is found in the "firewall" or "proxy" section of the FTP programs Preferences or Options menus. find it and enable it.

Explanation:
Normal FTP uses a "command" connection for sending commands from client to server. When a client downloads a file, the server opens a TCP connection back to the client in order to transfer the data.

In a normal firewall environment, the firewall allows all outgoing TCP connections from clients to servers, and blocks all incoming connections (that might be hackers trying to break into machines). This FTP mode of creating an inbound connection causes problems. One solution is to use smarter firewalls. Another solution has been to use an alternate mode in FTP called "PASV", where the client initiates the data connection.