Best webdev ftp program?

Messiah Khan · 2 Oct 2009 at 12:09

For ages now I have been using Netdrive to access my webspace to write and update my website. However it is really starting to annoy me. It keeps timing out without telling me and is generally unstable. So are there any good alternatives out there. I want something that allows me to quickly update files, ideally without having to download them, edit them then re-upload them. If they can be edited on the webserver then that's ideal. Also it need to be stable. Any ideas?

Pho · 2 Oct 2009 at 12:22

notepad++ has an FTP plugin for this - http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/

Tripnologist · 2 Oct 2009 at 12:35

Personally, I'm a fan of ws_ftp and have been using it since the late 90's.

It does have active edit so you can edit on the server.

My favourite feature though (and the only real reason I use it) is the tabs. It'll remember the tabs you had open and auto connect to those on launch. Great if you often upload to and from various servers from various local folders.

TwoSaints · 2 Oct 2009 at 13:10

Messiah Khan said:
For ages now I have been using Netdrive to access my webspace to write and update my website. However it is really starting to annoy me. It keeps timing out without telling me and is generally unstable. So are there any good alternatives out there. I want something that allows me to quickly update files, ideally without having to download them, edit them then re-upload them. If they can be edited on the webserver then that's ideal. Also it need to be stable. Any ideas?

Have a look at Webdrive, it is exactly the same idea as netdrive, except it is a far better piece of software.

http://www.southrivertech.com/products/webdrive/index.html

GravyMonster · 2 Oct 2009 at 13:46

SmartFTP does the tab remembering thing too. If you do go with SFTP get version 2.5 though as 3 is crap and bloated.

suarve · 2 Oct 2009 at 16:40

Use WISE FTP myself. Although I now have 71 sites stored in it, the scolling to connect to an ftp server is getting annoying.

beh · 3 Oct 2009 at 09:38

WinSCP

RobH · 3 Oct 2009 at 11:27

I've seen a few web developers make use of Subversion (SVN) for this purpose and it looks a pretty good way of managing the files. I allows you have have a 'live' and 'development' version of the site and been able to commit changes to the live one with one command as well as supporting rollback to previous versions. I think you would need to have some SVN server software installed on the server end though which isn't going to be available on most webservers.

dangerstat · 3 Oct 2009 at 14:59

RobH said:
I've seen a few web developers make use of Subversion (SVN) for this purpose and it looks a pretty good way of managing the files. I allows you have have a 'live' and 'development' version of the site and been able to commit changes to the live one with one command as well as supporting rollback to previous versions. I think you would need to have some SVN server software installed on the server end though which isn't going to be available on most webservers.

SVN is way overkill for simple web development work

Messiah Khan · 4 Oct 2009 at 10:01

Pho said:
notepad++ has an FTP plugin for this - http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/

So it does! And it works perfectly. Thanks, that should do the job very nicely.

Jonny_no2 said:
Have a look at Webdrive, it is exactly the same idea as netdrive, except it is a far better piece of software.

http://www.southrivertech.com/products/webdrive/index.html

Thanks for the suggestion Jonny, but it needs to be free.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Think the FTP part of notepad++ does most of what I'm after.