c
 

     



The first thing you¶ll need to setup your own FTP server in Windows is to make sure you
have Internet Information Services (IIS) installed. Remember, this only comes with !



Professional or Windows Vista Business or higher.

Click on , ½
 
 

and go to ë

  . Then click on ë

 

   .

In the components wizard, scroll down until you see IIS in the list and check it off. Before
you click  though, make sure you click on Details and then check off   
    .
Click ^ and then click . Windows will go ahead and install the necessary IIS files
along with the FTP service. You may be asked to insert your Windows XP or Windows Vista
disk at this point.


   

Once IIS has been installed, you may have to restart your computer. Now we want to go
ahead and open the IIS configuration panel to setup our FTP server. So go to , then
    and click on ë
   . You should now see an icon for   
    .

When you open IIS for the first time, you¶ll only see your computer name in the left hand
menu. Go ahead and click the symbol next to the computer name and you¶ll see a couple of
options like Web Sites, FTP Sites, etc. We¶re interested in FTP Sites, so expand that out also.
You should see ! , click on it.
You¶ll notice after you click on the default FTP site that there are a couple of buttons at the
top that look like VCR buttons: Play, Stop, and Pause. If the Play button is greyed out, that
means the FTP server is active. Your FTP server is now up and running! You can actually
connect to it via your FTP client 
 . I use Smart FTP, but you can use whatever you
like best.

Open your FTP client software and type in  "  as the host name and choose
ë #  for the login. Connect and you should now see an empty folder.

Ok, so that¶s step 1! Now where the heck is this folder that you are currently viewing? Well
the default FTP site is actually located in $% &% . Open this directory and dump
some files into it.
Now refresh on your FTP client and you should now see your files listed!

So you now have an up and running FTP server on your local computer. Before I show you
how you can create separate folders that are stored in a different directory other than the
default Inetpub folder, let¶s first connect to our FTP server from another computer on the


.

In order to do this, you¶ll have to open up the Windows Firewall to allow FTP connections to
your computer, otherwise all external computers will be blocked. You can do this by going to
,     and then clicking on 

 
. Click on the ë
 
Tab.

Under the 0 

½


  section, make sure all of the connections are
checked in the left list and then click on the   button. You¶ll now be able to open
certain ports on your computer based on the service your computer is providing. Since we are
hosting our own FTP server, we want to check off.
ë little popup window will appear with some settings that you can change, just leave it as it is
and click OK. Click OK again at the main Windows Firewall window. You have now opened
up the firewall for FTP connections. Now try to connect to your FTP site from a different
computer on your network. You¶ll need to get the IP address of the computer first before you
can connect into it from a different computer.

Go to , click  and type in '!. Type ^( and jot down the number for IP
ëddress:

In your FTP client on the other computer, type in the IP ëddress you just wrote down and
connect anonymously. You should now be able to see all of your files just like you did on the
FTP client that was on the local ›
.

Now that the FTP site is working, you can create as many folders as you like for FTP
purposes. In this way, when a user connects, they specify a path that will connect to one
specific folder.

Back in IIS, right click on Default FTP Site and choose 
, and then ) !  #.
When you create a virtual directory in IIS, you¶re basically going to create an alias that points
to a folder on the local hard drive. So in the wizard, the first thing you¶ll be asked is for a
alias name. Make is something simple and useful like ³WordDocs´ or ³FreeMovies´, etc.

Click Next and now browse to the path where you want the alias to refer to. So if you have a
bunch of movies you want to share, browse to that folder.

Click Next and choose whether you want it as 

access only or 

  access.
If you simply want to    , check Read. If you want people to be able to upload files to
your computer, choose Read and Write.

Click Next and then click Finish! Now you¶ll see your new virtual directory below the default
FTP site. You can connect to you using your FTP client by putting in the Path field ³/Test´ or
³/NameOfFolder´.
Now you¶ll only see the files that are in the folder we had browsed to.

ënd that¶s about it! You can create as many folder as you like! The only thing other thing
that you would need to do is to give out your public IP address to anyone who is connecting
from outside of your internal network. If you want users to connect from anywhere in the
world, you¶ll have to give them your public IP address, which you can find out by going to
"$
" # 

* .

Finally, you¶ll need to forward the FTP port on your 

 to your local computer that is
hosting the FTP server.   

is a great site to show you how to forward ports on
your router to computers on your home network.

Ê
Ê 


  


  
    

Ê

Ê 




    
 
 

Ê

Ê
Ê

ÊÊ