How Do I Manage My Anonymous FTP Access?

Virtual domain account users can allow anonymous FTP access to visitors wishing to download or upload files to your web site as if you were running your own FTP server.

By default, all files and directories within your ANON FTP account are set for NO ACCESS. You need to contact support via the Contact Form to request the enabling of ANON FTP. Please read the anonymous ftp disclaimer below before ordering.

Once ANON FTP is enabled, files can be accessed anonymously via FTP client or by using the following URL format:

Anonymous FTP - You can provide anonymous FTP access for your users also. The directory you would use for this would be related to your IP number. For example, if your IP number is 209.196.55.1, then your anonymous FTP directory would be /var/spool/ftp/209.196.55.1. You would then place your files in the /pub directory there. (Yes, that directory structure is necessary.) You can also customize the welcome.msg. If you don't know your IP number, then you can use the command nslookup yourdomainname.com to find it out.

Anonymous visitors wishing to access your site via FTP client (e.g., WS_FTP) must use your domain name as the FTP hostname, userID of anonymous and password of guest.

Ex.1: For people to UPLOAD files to your pub directory, the WS_FTP screen should look like this:

Ex.2: For you to manage you anonymous FTP, the WS_FTP screen should look like this:

Anonymous FTP is disabled on our servers. We can turn on the permissions for the anonymous Ftp directories on an individual basis pursuant to customer request (including domain name, userID and password). However, it has been our experience that except in rare cases, anonymous FTP is not really necessary. If you have files that you wish to make available for download by the general public, we suggest placing links to those files directly on your web pages. For example:

Place the file named file.exe in the following directory:

/mnt/web/guide/yourdomainname/download/

Place this code on your web page:

<a href="http://yourdomainname.com/download/file.exe">click here to download file</a>

Following a link to a .zip or .exe file on our servers, automatically invokes an http process that will take precedence over ftp processes, resulting in faster downloads, so this is to your advantage. We suggest using Winzip or Stuffit to compress any one file or any group of files (any format) into one .zip or .exe (self extracting zip file). This will further lessen download time.

FTPOnly Accounts 

If you need to provide upload access, we suggest using an FTPOnly Account. This costs $40/year and provides a separate directory under your root with its own ftponly login id and password that you can divulge to those you wish to grant upload access. This ftponly login id will not have access outside this ftponly directory. Since you choose the password for this ftponly user id, you can access files in this directory by logging in as this user id. For example: Your domain is bob.com and your userID is bill. You want to give Tom a place to upload his own files and have them accessible to people on the web but don't want Tom to have access to your directories. So, we set up a userID called bill01 and a directory called

            /mnt/web/guide/bob/tomsplace.

When Tom log's in via ftp he uses the same info you do, only he adds a 01 after your userID (bill) and uses his own password. Although he can create directories inside of /tomsplace, he can't access anything outside of /tomsplace. Since you assign the password for Tom to use, you can always log in as bill01 and delete Tom's stuff if it becomes too large. Tom's pages are visible on the web as:

             http://bob.com/tomsplace/file.html

If you absolutely must provide upload access to the general public, we will enable it. This will give anybody the ability to upload large files in subdirectories that they create that you may not be able to delete (ftp bombing), thus pushing your total disk usage above the size allowed for by your pricing plan, resulting in additional charges. If XyNexT is required to delete these unwanted or inaccessible files or directories, there will be a $30 service fee. The general public will also have the ability to upload commercial software that could possibly place you in violation of copyright law. XyNexT bears no responsibility or liability for the contents of your anonymous ftp directories once you have requested that they be enabled.