When it comes to the internet, websites, and website security, you may have already realised that there is no shortage of terminology. Much of this terminology seems to have been created by someone who was on a mission to use as many long words and letters as possible. This has led to many of them being abbreviated, and one of those abbreviations is FTP.
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and here we are going to explain what it is and why it is used. Trying to explain FTP is made more difficult because it can be defined in three different ways. First, it is a ‘method’ of transferring files, next it is the ‘software’ or ‘client’ which does the sending and receiving, and to add even more to the mix, FTP is also used as an ‘action’ in the sense that someone may be asked to FTP files to a server.
How FTP Works
For FTP to take place, there have to be two parties to it, in the same sense that a verbal conversation cannot take place unless two people are involved. With FTP, the two parties are the sender and the receiver. The sender, using FTP software, will send files to the receiver. The receiver can either be another person simply working on a PC, or it could be a server, with an example being a hosting server receiving the files required to publish a website online.