Feedback on Toolbox Activity 4 about FTP, Images and Video

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

October 29, 2008 [1889 views]

A slightly smaller number of people completed this week’s activity. We are therefore running a catchup session (Thusday afternoon) for those who have fallen behind and made sure that the next activity (Activity 5) can be done by everyone even if they have not finished the last couple. Hopefully you can use Employability Week to catch up and then we can start building more on our WordPress sites.

For those of you who have kept up with all of the activities you will be pleased to know that many of you have already effectively passed this module (4 part 1s plus 4 part 2s). Feel pleased with yourselves! Of course you still need to complete 4 further part 1s to actually complete the module ☺

Questions raised this week

When can we start eCommerce? How do we set up our own shop online? How can I take advertising in my website?

We will have a future activity introducing eCommerce. There is so much we will not be able to cover however and if you want to experiement on your own – feel free.

Is FTP fairly secure?

Yes. There is also a secure encrypted version.

Is it possible to transfer files via FTP anonymously? I tried this using FireFTP, but it did not allow me to do anything.

Anonymous FTP has to be configured on the FTP server (at your hosting company). I suspect that you have not done that.

Will the activities get any more difficult than the uploading of the youtube videos activity?

Some people found this very easy and some very hard. Within a class like this there are people from all sorts of backgrounds and experiences. I am trying to pitch the activities at (or slightly above) an appropriate First Year level.

I am using Site Ground which gives you options of adding additional things onto your site such as e-mail, forum, shopping basket ect. Will I still be able to put these things on if I’m using WordPress as it is a different programme?

I suspect not. Word Press has its own extensions for things like eCommerce. You can run different bits and pieces alongside WordPress however. If you wanted for example to run a forum you could use Fantastico to install PHPbb2 and link to that from your WordPress site.

Is it possible to upload images from the internet and put them on my website without using copy and paste method? If possible how?

You can “download” images from the web by using the right mouse button (Windows) and then use FTP to upload these to your site. Take care of copyright issues.

What are you exactly leading us to with our sites. Meaning what is your overall aim with our sites?

My aim is to give you confidence in managing your own IT world – that’s all. Your sites provide you with a place to experiment and you are free to do as much as you want. I suggest that you use them to document your thinking for this and other modules and you use them to develop your IT skills.

What FTP client does cPanel use? Could you please give us a brief explanation of FTP? What is anonymous FTP? Why do we need to use ftp? What is difference between just typing ftp://xxx@domain.com and then use in window browser and the FTP program?

cPanel uses an FTP server rather than an FTP client. Your client connects over a “protocol” called FTP and they “agree” to exchange data. This is similar (and developed earlier) to HTTP (the protocol behind the World Wide Web).

Anonymous FTP allows you to upload and more frequently download information without having to log in. It is used extensively for software repositories. To server to anonymous FTP clients you need to configure the FTP server at your hosting company to allow anonymous access.

As some of you have noticed, many browsers support FTP (especially anonymous FTP) directy.

Will we be learning HTML? If so can you recommend any books.

I will not be teaching you much HTML but I recommend that you experiment with it a bit. Look for books (and web tutorials) that use the modern xHTML version.

Did you have these sorts of problems when you first started to make web sites like these?

Absolutely and we still do! It changes so fast that it is impossible to know everything. That is why this module has been designed in this way. There will be new software tools, new programming languages and new systems for you to master and what you need is a way of finding your own strategies for learning about them.

Are their copyright laws for embedding a video from youtube or are you free to embed videos without asking permission?

You are not copying the video, simply linking to it. It is still hosted and running at YouTube.

Do you actually look at our sites?

Yes although not every site every week. I have probably looked at 60 of them this week and slightly more last week. We will check every site after Employability Week before declaring that you have passed the activities.

Some further questions I will discuss in class

Can you FTP to two sites at the same time?
How can I use the files I have uploaded on my site?
Can an FTP site be hacked? Are there more secure alternatives?
Are there other file upload mechanisms available?
How can we achieve single sign-in across multiple applications such as WordPress, PHP BB and Chat?
Would it be possible to upload games onto the blog so that users can play while on the blog?
How much data can a blog hold?

What do you think?

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