I am currently in the process of migrating my websites into a new dedicated web server infrastructure, the upshot of which means moving a great deal of data around, quickly and safely. For this task I have turned to my old friend WS_FTP Professional from Ipswitch, currently up to version 12.2.

WS_FTP Professional is a file transfer client designed to make transferring files between computers easy and secure – FTP, SFTP, and HTTP transfer protocols are supported, together with SSL, SFTP/SSH and OpenPGP for added security. For those with extra security concerns the product now meets the stringent requirements for FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard).

I have used WS_FTP for quite some years and seen the product develop into the essential application it is today. Today, the file transfer utility supports Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, and Windows 7 and it has adopted the familiar Windows look and feel.

Image Credit: Ipswitch

The application utilises a split screen, drag and drop,tabbed interface with the left hand pane typically showing your local files and search options and the tabbed right hand pane your remote connections – the tabbed panes are really useful for dealing with multiple remote endpoints. The bottom panel is where the action is tracked, informing of transfer status, and allowing you to prioritise, pause, and stop transfers as appropriate.

New transfer locations are added using the Sites Manager which can utilise a Connection Wizard to help you through some of the key decisions. For this you need the hostname, userID and password for a transfer approved account. You can also fine tune the connection by specifying local and remote start-up folders, set the transfer mode between ASCII, binary, and automatic and even configure the default file masks. If the file extensions you  need aren’t available you can create them here – this is useful as the remote host may need a different file extension (for example they might use .tiff, or .jpeg files whereas you have .tif and .jpg). The Site options section is where you configure the server type (FTP,FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS and SFTP/SSH) depending on your remote host security configuration You can also specify the remote host type to help the application understand better the functionality on offer, and set passive mode which puts your computer in charge of managing the connections.

Desktop Search is now built into the product allowing for quick and easy searches of your local files using a number of search connectors including Windows Search, Google Desktop Search, and Copernic Desktop Search.

Backup Jobs have been extended to include one-time or regular file transfer to take effect automatically and you can configure the backup to automatically Zip up your files – which is a nice feature as it saves a manual step. Backups can be configured from a local machine to a local machine, local to remote, remote to local, or remote to remote.

Ipswitch provide a healthy support section for WS_FTP Professional, which includes a downloadable getting started guide, a professional forum and access to the community site File Transfer Planet.

Learn more about Ipswitch WS_FTP Professional.