What's the Best Way to Upload Files to a Server?

There are two common ways to transfer the contents of your website from your computer to the server of your web hosting account, and those common ways are listed below:

1. To upload files from your computer using the File Manager inside the control panel of your web hosting account. There are many different kinds of file managers. Some hosting account have more than one file manager, yet there's still an account with just one kind of file manager.
2. To upload contents using any FTP client, such FileZilla or Core FTP for Windows, or Cyberduck for Mac. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and an FTP client is a software application that can connect to your FTP server if you have it, by your authentication and can transfer files.

But there's still other than those ways to upload a file to your web server, like to upload using Web Disk application. Web Disk is an alternative to FTP for transferring files, but it's slightly slower and more complicated to setup. However, it is much more reliable and does not require any additional software (such FTP client,) on most operating systems.

The most known way for uploading files specially for a beginner, is no other than direct uploading via File Manager, in fact it's the first way of uploading that a beginner would be learned in the beginning. The advantages of this transferring way are:

1. You doesn't need to open another software, like FTP application such FileZilla client.
2. In File Manager, you can edit the file that has been transferred to your web server instantly.
3. If you will just upload one file or two, three, four or a few files.

The disadvantages about this way of file uploading are listed below:

• It's takes a lot of work to upload too many contents from your computer by difficultly selecting all those contents one by one.
• Uploading a content thru a file manager is often have file size limits than using an FTP client.

The best way to upload files from your computer to your web server is by using an FTP client (software). But you must have an FTP account first, where you will need to connect your FTP client. And the advantages of this transferring way are:

1. Easy to upload files, specially if the files are too many and have big sizes.
2. Almost all HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) editors and Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) for Web supports File Transfer Protocol.

The contrariwise disadvantages about this way of file uploading are listed below:

• If you will open an FTP client (software) and connect it to your FTP server just to upload a few files. (But it depends on the case.)
• Some common FTP clients allow you to edit the file that has been transferred to your web server but the file that's in editing will just synchronized from your web server to your computer and back to the server, caused your transferred-file editing to be slow.

If you want to know what's the best FTP client, then the most recommended FTP software by most web hosting companies is FileZilla client. You can download that FTP client software freely at “FileZilla - Client Download” and the guidelines for installing it is documented at 9 Steps to Install an FTP Client on Windows.