Auto FTP Manager Review It was more years ago than I care to admit, but I DO remember when I posted my first web page; rollovers were still considered "high tech", Netscape was the the number one browser, and FTP was something most people didn't deal with. Since then, rollovers became common then unused except as menu items, Netscape vanished, and everyone and their brother decided to write an FTP program. The pattern is familiar; offer a free FTP program with basic features and charge an arm and a leg for the "pro" version that actually does what you need it to. Most of the "free" FTP programs you see still use the dual folder formula where you drag files from your local folder to the remote one. The problem is that poor connections can make your upload take forever, or even worse, abort it in the middle resulting in bad files on your website. Even if conditions are perfect, they still require manual intervention which no one really wants to do. Now, thanks to Auto FTP Manager, you can get an FTP program that takes the drudgery out of maintaining a website without inviting bankruptcy with a high registration fee. Auto FTP Manager does this by not only allowing you to automate conventional FTP tasks but allows you synchronize local and remote files or folders, compare them, and backup/restore/cleanup web sites. Think of the possibilities; add changes to a remote web site by just putting them in a local backup site, restore an entire web site from a compressed file on your hard drive, compare local and remote files for differences, delete unwanted files and folders from remote sites, all done automatically! Along with great feautures, Auto FTP Manager includes a thorough tutorial as well as very extensive help pages. I'm not going to try to duplicate them here but will concentrate on those areas not covered. Please note that Auto FTP Manager requires .Net framework 1.1 which should be installed before Auto FTP Manager. You can download .Net Framework 1.1 from Microsoft for free. Once installed, you'll be able to run any application designed for the .Net Framework. To get the most out of this tutorial, download Auto FTP Manager, install it and follow along with the examples. Basic FTP Functions. Auto FTP Manager requires each remote site to have either an automation or quick connect "profile" in order to access files. We'll cover the automated functions later, for now, let's create a Quick Connect Profile. When the program starts, the Quick Start box appears with four options; choose "Create new Quick Connect profile". If you've already turned off the Quick Start box, just select "File" from the top menu bar and then "Quick Connect". Either method opens a box that asks for information about your remote site; host name, user name, and password. Click "OK" and the File Manager will start. The left window will be your local folder, which, by default, is the folder that Auto FTP Manager is located in. The right window will be your remote site. Files and folders can be transferred back and forth using standard drag and drop method. A reduced screenshot of the File Manager window can be seen below. You can also set file associations so that certain files use binary transfer and others use ascii transfer. Click on "Tools" from the top menu bar and then "File Associations..." to bring up the window where these parameters can be set. Unlike many FTP programs, Unix permissions can be set for certain file extensions as well. This is the standard functionality of most FTP programs you'll find. It will transfer files but requires constant user interaction which wastes time if you either have a large site to maintain or like to make frequent updates. If this is all you need an FTP program to do, you can probably find one online for free and don't need Auto FTP Manager. Before you decide, read on and find out just how much time the advanced features of Auto FTP Manager can save you while maintaining a site. Creating a quick connect profile is covered by an interactive tutorial inside the program which you may want to refer to. Automation Profile The idea behind an automation profile is to provide four types of information you need to perform synchronize, Backup/Restore, Cleanup, and Compare functions. The information you need is: 1) Login information for a remote FTP server 2) Assign specific remote and local folders you wnat used when performing the synchronize, Backup/Restore, Cleanup, and Compare functions. 3) What rules to use when performing these functions. 4) Which functions you want performed every time you open the profile. Please remember when creating the Automation Profile that you DON'T have to specify any or all of the automated events. You also have the option of using the file manager for manual file transfer. To create an Automation Profile, either select "Create New Automation Profile" from the quick start box or select "File" from the top menu bar and then "New Profile"; this opens the new profile wizard. The first page of the wizard describes what actions you will use the profile for such as synchronize, backup/restore, etc. Click next to continue. On the next page, add the connection information as you did with the Quick Connect profile and click next. The next page is where you input specific information about which folders you want used. This allows you to create automation profiles for different sections of the same website. For example, if you have a website devoted to displaying a large assortment of pictures, you may want to change the images without changing the web pages. To do this, create a folder called "pictures" on your website with all the images inside it; set this as the remote folder. Next, put all the pictures your want to go into that remote folder in a local folder called "download pictures" and set this as the remote folder. Future synchronizations, backups, restores, etc will be between the remote "pictures" folder and the local "download pictures" folder. Specifics will be covered in later sections. For now, you may want to select two empty folder to practice with. You have additional control over which data the profile will control by clicking the include subfolders checkbox or using the include or ignore list. The include subfolders checkbox will include all subfolders in any automated action while the include or ignore list is more specific. Clicking on the select button for the ignore list feature bring up a list of folders and files that, if selected, will not be effected by any automated action. The include list works in reverse; only selected folders and files take part in automated action. Click "Next" after making your selection which will open the action rules page. The action rules page is where you determine how the synchronize process will work. For example, if a local folder or file is not present, you have the option of downloading it from the remote location or deleting it from the remote location. You can always alter these specifications in the profile later so don't worry too much about your selections for now. Click "Next" to continue. The next page has advanced options that you may or may not want to use. The bottom of the window deals with login retries, server timeouts and data transfer timeouts. When Auto FTP Manager sends command to the remote site, it waits for a reply and then the data transfer. If this reply is not received before the server timeout period, Auto FTP Manager will report an error. If the data is not received before the data transfer timout period expires, Auto FTP Manager will also report an error. If a remote FTP server doesn't respond to login information, Auto FTP will retry the connection process as many times as specified. The five checkboxes deal with these properties. Active Mode - Two methods used when establishing a link between the FTP server and your pc are active and passive. The default is passive but you can change it to active by clicking the appropriate box. Use Time Zone Difference - Time zone differences will take into account the difference in time zones between you and your remote site so that comparisons on file time stamps will be more accurate. Use Safe Upload Technology - This prevents partial files from being loaded. Resume Download(s)/Resume Upload(s) - If a download or upload is interrupted, Auto FTP Manager will automatically resume the download or upload if these options are selected. Clicking next will bring up a list of profile operations to choose from. Any operation you choose will automatically occur when you click on the automation profile to connect. For now, just check File manager; you can add or delete operation from the profile later as you wish. Clicking "Finish" will open the File Manager and add the profile to the list of automation profiles on the left. You can tell which profile is active by the icon next to the profile; the small computer screen will be blue instead of gray, as shown below. You can have several profiles active at once. Changing an existing profile is easy; just right click on the profile and select "Edit Properties.." from the pop up window. The "Edit Profile" window that allows you to access any of the information in the profile except the layout is a bit different. Information to connect to the remote FTP server is in text boxes on the right side of the window while the other information is accessed through a series of files in the left side of window. The "Edit Profile" window shown below. Creating an automation profile is also covered by an interactive tutorial inside the program which you may want to refer to. Synchronize Now that the automation profile is complete, you can use it to synchronize the local and remote folders specified in the profile. How the folders will synchronize is determined by the action rules specified in the profile. For example, if you wanted your remote folder to look exactly like your local one you would set the "remote file is not present" option to "upload local file" and the "local file not present" to "delete remote file". This would only change the remote site and maintain your website as an exact copy of your local folder. Any data uploaded from different sources would be deleted. If, however, you have data uploaded to the remote site from various sources, you may wish set the action rules so that both the remote and local sites will change as needed. In this case, set the "remote file is not present" option to "upload local file" and the "local file not present" to "download remote file". Below is a screenshot of the action rules with one of the drop down menus open to display some of the available options. Please note that different rules offer different options in their dropdown menus. You may want to practice with dummy folders and files to ensure the action rules yield the desired results. After you're decided which rules to use, you're ready to synchronize. Right click on the profile to show the options available and select "preview synchronization". This opens a window showing which files and folders are different according to the action rules specified. If the data to be transferred is acceptable, right click the profile again and select "synchronize" which will perform the operation. Compare Files can have the same name but be different sizes or have different time stamps. The compare function allows you to monitor all three difference. To start the compare function, right click on the profile of your choice and select "Compare Files..." from the dropdown menu. After scanning the local and remote files, the window will display any differences between files in the remote and local folders. Different comparison results are obtained by clicking the appropriate tab at the top of the window. The screenshot below shows results for files with different names. When comparing time stamps, you'll notice that all of the files are different. This can be due to backups being done without time difference synchronization between local and remote sites, or many other reasons. Be sure to consider these differences when setting synchronization rules concerning timestamps. The compare function only allows you to look at differences and not change them. All differences in remote and local folders should be considered before setting action rules for synchronization or performing any other automatic function. Cleanup As the previous feature shows, remote sites with many users often get cluttered with old files which in many cases should be deleted. Unfortunately, by the time users notice all the extra files to get rid of, it's no longer a fast job -- unless you use Auto FTP Manager. Cleanup works by removing files and folders in a remote location that are not present locally. Since cleanup does not depend on the action rules, it can be run on any or all profiles regardless of how you want the synchronization to work. To perform a cleanup operation, right click the profile of your choice and select "Cleanup" from the dropdown list; this opens the cleanup wizard. After reading the introduction page, click next and the wizard will start looking at the profile's remote site for files that aren't present locally. After the scan is complete, you have the option to perform the cleanup operation on the entire remote folder or only certain sections of it. If you chose to select which files and folders to clean up, a new window will open that displays all of the files or folders that are unique to the remote site. Select those you want to delete and click "next". A popup box will appear after the cleanup process; click "Finish" to close the window. Backup What makes catastrophic server failure really catastrophic is when you forgot to backup your remote files. Auto FTP Manager allows you to backup your site manually or automatically according to a scheduled event. Scheduled functions will be covered in the Task Scheduler section. For manual backup: 1) Right click on the automation profile of your choice and select "Backup and Restore" from the popup menu. This opens the backup/restore wizard. 2) The first page is an information page; read it and click "next". 3) The next page asks two questions: - Backup whole website or just specific folders? - Backup with or without compressed files. The compressed file option backs up your data into one .cab file. After making your selections, click next. 4) The next page displays a list of files and folders at the remote site specified in the profile. Select the folders/files of your choice to backup or use the "select all" button to select everything. Click "next" after making your choice. 5) The last page asks if you want a new folder for each backup or if you want to overwrite old ones. If you want to keep records of old files for awhile, you'll want all of your backups in new folders. Make your choice, click next and the backup will proceed. The restore option works in the opposite manner. Task Scheduler Auto FTP Manager doesn't stop with these great features but allows you to automate them as well; just follow these steps. 1) Click on "tools" from the top menu bar and then "Task Scheduler" or use the "CTRL-T" shortcut. This opens the task scheduler window. 2) The task scheduler window allows you to perform three functions: add task, edit task, or delete task. 3) Click the "Add Task" button which opens a window where you specify which tasks you want performed and at what time. The tasks you can automatically perform are synchronize, backup and cleanup. These options are shown in the image below. You can schedule these actions at a variety of time intervals such as daily or monthly; you can also specify custom schedules as well as which automation profiles you want scheduled. Proper use of the Task Scheduler allows you can synchronize or backup some sections of your website on a daily basis while other sections are only acted upon on a monthly basis. Select how often you want which tasks should run on which profiles and click "OK". A new task will appear in the task scheduler. To see how the task will run, set the start time for two minutes from the present time. 4) For automated tasks to be performed, Auto FTP Manager must be active but can be running in the background. To do this, select "Tools" from the top menu bar, then "Options" and select "Run in Background". When the scheduled time comes, Auto FTP Manager will run the specified tasks as long as the program is active or running in background. After the task has been run, you will be asked if you want to keep a log of the actions. Click "yes" and select the folder of your choice to save these records in. Once all of your tasks are automated, you only have to make sure that Auto FTP Manager is active in order for the tasks to be completed. One way of ensuring this is to have Auto FTP Manager start when windows does. Select "Tools" from the top menu bar, then "Options" and "Autostart with Windows" in order to have Auto FTP Manager start when your system does. Conclusion and registration If you have two pages and four images in your website then any FTP program will probably suit your purpose. If you never want to mirror data to a remote site you may not need any FTP program at all. If you find that maintaining a website or remote data is starting to take more time than you want than Auto FTP Manager is a program you must have. Not only can you automatically change your website by changing a remote file but you can insure that your data is safe in the case of a catastrophic server failure. When deciding how best to use your time, I'm sure you'd choose improving your website over watching 50 meg of data get manually uploaded to remote sites. Let Auto FTP Manager free up your wasted time for better purposes. The time saved by using Auto FTP Manager will more than pay for the reasonable registration fee. When registering, please support the Shareware Genie and use the link found withing the program. You can download the trial version by clicking on the button below. I hope you find the program useful and would like to hear your comments at It takes more than an HTML editor to make a web page. If you're interested in other helpful web page programs like Auto FTP Manager, check out the Webmaster's Page. - The Genie - News || Reviews || Utilities || Home/Office || Web Tools || Web Utils || Graphics || Security || Games || Other Categories || Program List || FAQ || Forum || About Us || Contact Us || Home Strategy Games || Action Games || Puzzle Games || Card Games ||