Publishing to a Remote Host

Previous Step

This article is part of the "Setting Up Your Host" procedure, and is for you if you are publishing your site to a remote host other than MobileMe. If you wish to publish to a MobileMe account, please see the "Publishing to MobileMe" article.

The previous step of this process is "Choosing a Publishing Location."

Host Settings

Sandvox will ask you to enter you host settings like this:

The settings you enter are used by Sandvox to piece together the information required for uploading and viewing the site, as demonstrated by this diagram:

Remember that all of the settings you need to set up your site for publishing should be provided by your host. You may need to contact them if you are missing anything.

URL Format

The address that visitors will view your site at. Generally, something like this:

http://www.example.com

If you are setting up a brand new website, your domain name may not yet point to your host (or you may not even have bought one yet!). If so, you can still enter the domain here and when Sandvox fails the connection test, just ignore it for the time being. We recommend that once the domain is properly connected you run the Host Setup Assistant again to ensure everything is correct.

Some hosts also provide a link to your account as a subdomain of their website and you could perhaps enter that URL here instead.

Hostname

The address of the server to connect to when publishing your site. Your host may instead refer to this as:

"Host name"
"Server"

The hostname might be basically the same as the URL Format like so:

example.com

or to your hosting provider:

examplehost.com/john

Upload Method and Port

The method by which the site will be uploaded to your host. The available methods are FTP, SFTP, and WebDAV (but not over SSL). In general, we prefer it if you use "SFTP" since it is more secure, however your host may not support that. They should tell you which methods they support.

Sandvox automatically fills in the "Port" field for you. You should only change this value if your host specifically requires you to.

Username

Your username for logging into the Host server. Your host may instead refer to this as:

"Account ID"
"User ID"

Password

Your password for logging into the Host server.

If you have chosen SFTP as your upload method, then you can check the "Use public key" box to use a public key instead of a password. Please see the "Uploading using SFTP" article for information on this.

Note that in order to store your password securely, Sandvox will save it in your Keychain.

Document Root

If you know your document root, type it here. (This information should have been supplied by your host when you initially set up service.)

If you don't know the name of your document root directory, click the "Browse…" button.

It will take a moment for the next window to open. If all of the information you've entered is correct, the window that opens will show you the folders available to you on your external host. There should only be a few directories to choose from, and one of these is the folder in which your web site will be stored.

The document root is often, but by no means always a directory called "www". Your host may use a different name (such as htdocs, httpdocs, html, public_html, or web).

Subfolder

If you plan to have multiple sites within the same host, then they must be in separate subfolders. Enter a name for the subfolder this site will be placed in or leave it blank. You do not need to alter the URL Format to include your choice of subfolder. You cannot use any incompatible characters, such as spaces.

Next Step

Once this information has been entered, click the "Continue" button to move on to "Testing Your Connection."