What is FileZilla and how do you use it to trasnfer files from a site to your computer?

 In the last post I described moving an ASP.NET website contents from one hosting provider to another. However the described process copied content on a site from one provider to a site on another provider.

What if you don't have a new provider? Let us say, you want all the content from an existing site to your hard drive.  In this case FileZilla comes in very handy.

FileZilla is a free FTP solution which provides both an FTP Client (allowing downloading your site content) and FTP server (you can upload files to a site) and is supported by a forum and its users.
You can download FileZilla from here:

https://filezilla-project.org/

You need to download the file from this site shown here:

Wait, do not click on the big green button. It will also allow you to download FileZilla, but it will bring in extra bundled stuff you may not need. When you scroll down you will see more options and there choose to download the one shown here:

If you want both client and server, you can get them by clicking both the buttons, one at a time. I got only the client program as I want to download from my website. Once you start the FileZilla_3.7.4.1_win32-setup program it is pretty much wizard driven. Follow the steps including this one here:

Once the installation is complete you will be seeing this:

Lots of stuff to do in the above screen using links. I just clicked OK after briefly looking over it.

Now you can start your transfer from site to hard disk. Double click the FileZilla short cut on your desktop to display the user interface as shown.

You need to fill in the details of the website you are downloading from and of course you need the authentication details. The Port can be blank or 21 be default. Click on the QucikConnect button.
The program establishes  connection to the website and brings in the root folder of the site to the right hand pane as shown. The left hand pane shows the computer drives and folders as shown.

As soon as the connection is established you can see all the files/folders on your site populating the right hand site as shown (only the root is shown and it can be expanded).

All that is needed is to create a folder on the computer (In C:\drive in this case) and right click the root folder and click Download from the list as shown.

The files from righthad side gets trasnferred to the left side and you will be seeing the activities in the pane above. The downloaded files are shown progrssively transferred as shown the bottom pane. It also shows the files that missed for some reason, you can go over later adn get those files as well if necessary. It will show all the files downloaded.

That's all there is to it.

Mahalo