Web Site Concepts and Definitions

Upload

Any document you see online (html, pdf, word doc, jpg, gif) was typically created on a personal computer and then transferred ("uploaded") to a larger, separate computer accessible from the Web. In this scenario, the personal computer where the files are created is often called the local computer, and the Web-accessible computer is called the remote computer or "server." A file that has been uploaded to a Web server becomes available to anyone who has an Internet connection and a browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.).

Download

When you want to edit a document that is already available on the Web, you will be saving the online document to your local computer’s hard drive, a process called downloading.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

You can upload and download documents through a process called File Transfer Protocol (FTP), which uses the web address you specify to send/receive documents. At Northwestern, FTP is enhanced with extra security to protect your password. This is referred to as SFTP (for Secure File Transfer Protocol).

Contribute/Dreamweaver and SFTP

The file transfer process is built into the functionality of Adobe Contribute and Adobe Dreamweaver. Recent versions of Contribute and Dreamweaver (CS3 or CS4) also support the extra security of SFTP. More information on using this software is available on the following pages on this site: updating pages with Contribute and updating pages with Dreamweaver.