Users Guide

Chapter 21 - Anonymous FTP

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.

You can enable (and disable) ANON FTP access within Edit Account Information within your account Control Panel. Just check (or uncheck) the check box labeled "Anonymous FTP Enabled".

ANONYMOUS FTP WARNINGS:

Security

Anonymous FTP will grant any and all users the ability to access your "upload" directory, or any directory on your domain that has been set for "public" read/write permissions. Anonymous users will have access to upload or download files to and from your domain. You must set the appropriate permissions for your directories to restrict anonymous FTP access. This is needed to ensure that anonymous users will not be able to access any existing files or directories. You can inhibit access to specific files and directories using the File Manager by disabling public read and/or write access to the files or folders you don't want people to see (i.e.. cgi-local).

Responsibility

As the account owner, you are responsible for any and all files that are stored on your domain. This would include files that were uploaded by you as well as by anonymous FTP users. With the use of anonymous FTP, your site is susceptible of becoming a "warez" site. Typically, these are sites that are used by "hackers" to trade (upload/download) illegally pirated copies of software programs with one another. As the account owner, the complete content of your account is your responsibility. If your site becomes a trading post for "warez" programs, you may face legal action that can be taken against you by the programmers/software companies of the copyrighted software, in addition to your account being deleted from our servers. Please refer to our User Agreement for more information.

Data Transfer

Any and all FTP download transfers, anonymous FTP included, will be used in the calculation of the total data transfer for your account. If this total data transfer amount exceeds the limit that is set for your plan, you will be responsibility for any and all overage charges that occur. Please Note: There will be NO exceptions made for these overage charges. Once anonymous FTP has been enabled, it will be your responsibility to monitor the anonymous FTP activity for your account. All anonymous FTP activity is stored within the "xferlog" file. This file contains entries for each and every anonymous FTP upload/download session. This file is located within the /stats directory of your account. There is also a link provided off the "View your web usage statistics & logs" page of your account control panel.

Disk Space

If you are going to allow people to upload files to your site, make sure you keep track of your disk space usage via your Control Panel. Do not allow your disk space usage to get too close to your maximum disk space allocation or you may experience problems accessing your site via FrontPage and/or be unable to upload or modify files.

Once you enable ANON FTP in your Control Panel, files can be accessed anonymously via FTP client.

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

Your anonymous ftp site is completely different from your web site.

When people ftp to your domain anonymously, they will see the following directories:

bin/
dev/
etc/
incoming/
lib/
pub/

"pub" is where you should put all your anonymously accessible files. "incoming" is for the anonymous users to upload files.

For security the following applies:

- Only the incoming directory can be written to anonymously
- Sub-directories are not createable
- The incoming directory is not readable by people dropping files there

You are responsible for any "pirated" software uploaded by the anonymous users. The anonymous ftp sites will be periodically monitored for any abuses.

You may ignore the other directories.

To access the anonymous FTP site via the web, use the following address: ftp://yourdomain.com/pub/

Your HTML to download a file called something.exe from a web page would look like this:

<A HREF="ftp://yourdomain.com/pub/something.exe">Download Something Now</A>

You should tell your visitors that they may need to right-click on the link if they are PC users, or if they use a Macintosh, they need to hold down the mouse button on the link, then select the appropriate option from the Pop-up menu.