Bravenet started out as a very small company offering tons of free scripts and tools. They must have made money to employ more people through their ads. Now they are both a site with a huge number of free web master tools and they have just gone into hosting, as you will see on the right of this post.

I am thinking of some of you from blogger.com. Both the blogger and word press platforms are free but wordpress.org requires you to be self hosted. I’d have to say that this allows for far more flexibilty. I have to admit that when I look at a blogger site, I think this is not as professional as it could be, even though I have one myself on Tennis

You would be able to use your hosted word press for other things too like an ordinary web site and forum.

Now Bravenet has just posted how to upload to your host (them). Here is what they say:

So you have created your website and are ready to put it on the internet for the whole world to see. Not sure how to do this? Then keep reading!

Here at Bravenet we provide you with a few different ways to get your website online: file manager, FTP Java Applet and FTP.

Bravenet File Manager – File Upload

If you have large number of files to upload I suggest trying one of the other two methods below. The ‘Upload File’ link found in the top right of your file manager comes in handy when you only have a few files to upload. By all means you can upload as many files as you want – it just may take some time.

After you log into Bravenet, select your website and click file manager and you are now in the root of your website (root being: yourwebsite.com or yourwebsite.bravehost.com). If you were to upload your file from here it would be placed in your root – yourwebsite.com/yourfile.html or yourwebsite.bravehost.com/yourfile.html.

If you wish to put your file into a new folder you can click the ‘Make Directory’ link. Next, name your folder and it will then appear in your file list. If you click that folder (to go into it) and then upload a file it will upload into that folder (yourwebsite.com/yourfolder/yourfile.html or yourwebsite.bravehost.com/yourfolder/yourfile.html).

By default there are four upload boxes in the ‘File Upload’ window; you can add more by clicking the ‘new file upload box’ button. And then upload your files by clicking ‘uploading files.’

In the Bravenet File Manager you can also edit, rename and delete files. This comes in very handy if you just want to make a small change or delete a single file.

Bravenet Java FTP Applet

You can connect to the FTP Applet from a few different places. The easiest is to click the ‘ftp’ tab at the top and then click the icon under the title ‘FTP Applet.’ If you have more than one FTP account simply select the one you wish to use. The FTP Applet always starts by asking you for your password. Once it has loaded, double click the ‘web’ folder. You will then be provided with a list of your website(s) – select the website you wish to upload to by double clicking.

On the left side you will see a pane that says ‘Your Computer’. There you can browse through all of the files currently on your computer. To the right there is another pane called ‘Web Server’ (your website).

To upload a file to your site:

1. Find the file(s) that you wish to upload on your computer by using the ‘Your Computer’ pane.
2. If you want to upload the file(s) to a certain location on your website (ie. a folder called images) make sure you have opened that folder by doubling clicking it in your ‘Web Server’ pane.
3. Select the file(s) (click to highlight them).
4. Click on the upload arrow (arrow pointing to the right).

You can upload more than one file at a time by holding down your shift key. You can also upload an entire folder by just clicking the folder name – the FTP Applet will upload the folder and everything in it. To create a new folder you can click the ‘New Folder’ icon in the top right of your ‘Web Server’ pane.

FTP

You can also connect to Bravenet with any third party FTP program of your choice. You can obtain all your FTP information under the ‘ftp’ tab. You will need to know your username (it is different than your Bravenet one, so double check!), your password and your server/hostname. Again this is found on your ‘ftp’ tab after logging into Bravenet. How and where you enter this information is going to depend on the program you have chosen. Most FTP programs behave similarly to our Java FTP Applet.

If you are having problems with FTP I suggest checking our knowledge base or Jenny’s tutorial on FTP for help. Because there are so many FTP programs out there and they all vary it is impossible to give you instructions for every program. Check the program itself or program website for any help files if you are having troubles getting connected.

Recommendations: More than 8 files, or files that are more than 10 MB, use the FTP applet. More than 100 files (for example a complicated PHP application), or more than 100MB use a 3rd party FTP program.

Of course if you use wordpress for hosting you would not need to use FTP.