with Created Expression

In order to work on your site, you will need some way of transferring files to your web server.

From within Joomla!:

From the back-end of Joomla! (i.e. from the administrator's side of your Joomla! installation), you can upload images and other media through the media manager. You can get to the media manager from the "home" control panel or via the "site" menu. Once in the media manager, you can create and move between folders and you can browse your computer's disks to select an image to upload.

To manage files (again from the back-end of your Joomla! site), you can install and use the Joomla!Xplorer component, downloadable from http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomlaxplorer/. This component allows you to browse, upload, delete, open, edit and organize files (including images) on your web server while in the administrator portion of your Joomla! site.


From your web browser:

For sites hosted with The Collective Edge or other hosts offering the CPanel interface... you can use your web browser to access the control panel of your web site by using the address your host company provided you with.

For sites hosted with The Collective Edge, the web address for this follows the form "http://<yoursite.name>/cpanel/".
Once logged in to your CPanel, you will see a "file manager" icon. Clicking on this icon will bring up a new window containing a list view of your files. You can navigate up the directory tree by clicking on the folder with the ".." beside it and you can navigate down by clicking on the folder icon beside the directory to be explored.

Once positioned in the directory into which you would like to upload, clicking on "upload" will bring up an upload screen. This window lets you browse your computer's disks to select files (including images) to be uploaded and then lets you upload them.

And like Joomla!Xplorer, this interface also allows you to delete, open, edit and organize your files. And, also like Joomla!Xplorer, this is how to upload files to your web server. It does not allow you to transfer files from your web server back to your computer (i.e. download them).


To and from your computer:

To transfer files (including images) to and from your web server, you can use any FTP client software created for this purpose.

A great free piece of software is WinSCP, downloadable from http://winscp.net/eng/index.php and a commercial product I like is WS_FTP from IPSwitch at http://www.ipswitch.com/products/ws_ftp/home/index.asp. Regardless of which FTP client software you use, once you launch it you will need to provide the FTP address of the site to which you are connecting as well as the username and password through which you are connecting.

For sites hosted with The Collective Edge, FTP accounts are automatically created for your site under your (same) username and password. The host name follows the form "ftp.<yoursite.name>" and an example is "ftp.with-created-expression.com" or "ftp.demo.with-created-expression.com" The user name is the same as the username for access to your CPanel. And the password is the same as the password for access to your CPanel. You may, of course, change the FTP account and the user information through CPanel.
Once you provide your FTP client software with the host name, user name and password for your connection, you can "connect". (If you are using WinSCP, don't forget to use FTP mode and not SFTP or SCP.)

Once connected most software will show you the files on your computer on the left side of the screen and the files on the host you are connected to on the right side of the screen. Copying files is then a question of browsing to the right place in both windows, selecting the file/s to copy (either on your computer or the host) and clicking the transfer arrow in the appropriate direction. (The arrows are usually found between the two sides of the screen.)

Your host and most FTP client software will have a "time-out" limit for connections. This means that even though your FTP client software might still be running, the connection to your host will time-out after some period of inactivity on your part. Some software automatically re-connects when next you do something (you will live this as a delay in transfers) but some oblige you to re-connect from the beginning (meaning providing host and user information).