QUICK FTP TUTORIAL FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol As you might guess from the name FTP allows you to download and upload files from one computer to another across a network The easiest way to FTP files is through an FTP application usually called an FTP client Many FTP clients are free and provide an intuitive graphic user interface The most common client for the Mac is Fugu which can be downloaded for free at http www versiontracker com dyn moreinfo macosx 15693 There are several different free FTP clients for Windows including SmartFTP Most FTP clients work the same way Once you ve downloaded and installed a client open a connection to the course server Doing so is very easy in Fugu Once you open the application you should see the following window In the Connect to field enter users design ucla edu This is the name of the server that holds the course website In the Username field enter your DMA username the same one you use to log in to the computers in the classrooms The application should look like this Click the Connect button You should now see the following screen Enter your DMA password the same one you use to log in to the computers in the classrooms and hit the Authenticate button If you entered the correct password you should now see your the root bottom level directory for your account on the DMA server It should look something like this The left pane of the window lists your local files or files existing on the computer you are working on The right pane that just opened up lists your account files on the DMA server as indicated by the text below each pane Each one of these panes is a browsing window similar to the Finder on a Mac You use these browser windows to find the files on one machine and drag them into a folder on another The folders that you see in your DMA account right pane do different things For example the public html folder links to your personal DMA webpage You can drag files here if you want anyone to be able to view them using a web browser For example if I drag a file into my folder I should be able to see it online at http users design ucla edu caseyalt We ll be working with the myClasses folder If you double click on it you should see a directory that lists all the classes you ve taken in DMA Our class files are located in the F07 154A directory Double click the directory and you should see this screen This directory contains several folders You will not be allowed to view the admin folder since it is access to it is restricted to professors and TAs The drop folder is a special folder that allows students to upload files to one folder but not see what others have uploaded It s often used to turn in assignments for a class The public folder is a shared folder that every can upload and download from If you look in the public folder you should see the Kozel resource files I originally posted for people to download before I made them available for download directly through the course website The folder that we re interested in is the web folder since that where you ll need to upload your files to link to from within your posts Double click the web folder and you should see the following screen These are all the files that run the course website All of the files and folders should be locked to you except the images folder This is where you ll upload your files Double clicking the images folder will bring up the following screen As you can see the images folder contains sub folders for each student in the class as well as a few other folders and files that are locked to you since they re used to control other parts of the course website If you double click your folder it should bring up the contents of your folder If you re doing this for the first time your folder will probably be empty I ve created a test account on the system for Joe Bruin and uploaded a few files to it Doubleclicking the joe bruin folder will show me the following contents You can upload files to your folder by first browsing to the file you want to upload in the left pane your local files on the computer in front of you then dragging and dropping the file icon from the left pane to the right pane your file folder on the DMA course server This will tell Fugu that you want to create a copy of that file in the current directory you re viewing on the DMA server When you do so Fugu will show you the status of your upload When the upload is complete you should see the file listed in your server folder Now that you ve uploaded your file you can load it into your web post by creating a link to it The easiest way to do so is to type the following pattern into the Content field of your post at the location where you want the file to appear images firstname lastname file where the firstname lastname part corresponds to the name of your upload folder in the course webspace and file corresponds to the name of the file you want to load For example if I wanted to link to the image file I just uploaded to Joe Bruin s account I d type the following statement somewhere in my posting images joe bruin test jpg The exclamation points at the beginning and end of the link tell the courseware program that you are setting a file link and everything in between the exclamation points images joe bruin test jpg is the directory path to that file so that the system knows where to find it You ve already seen how that path system works since you just browsed it view your FTP client Thus I can structure my post like this When I hit the Create Entry button and look at my post the file should appear directly below the sentence I wrote That s it You should be able to do the same thing with Flash files and Quicktime movies Once you ve finished uploading files to your FTP space click the Disconnect button in the Fugu menu and close the application This will close your connection to the DMA server