5 things to try: An FTP error occurred - cannot make connection to host

So in the last video, we went pretty smoothly. We connected our Remote Server, we uploaded the site. And it all went nicely. Now I bet you, more than half a year you're going to have loads of problems getting the FTP connected. There's a few things. There's a few easy things to check, then there are a few hard ones. So let's look at the easiest ones.

The first one is to close Dreamweaver, and to reopen it again. 'File', 'Close'. Actually, go to Dreamweaver and 'Quit' it. Or 'File', 'Quit' on a PC. And reopen it again, and try your FTP again. Surprisingly, that fixes it sometimes. The next thing to do is-- I'm going to go back to 'Local'. And I'm going to get at it, so I'm going to 'Manage Sites'. I'm going to open up 'My Bootstrap Website' I'm going to 'Servers', open up here, and this thing, same, clicking 'Test', it's coming up with a problem, and not connecting.

One of the easy options is, under 'More Options', there's this one that says 'Use Passive FTP'. If it's on, turn it off, if it's off, turn it on. Try it both ways. If that doesn't work, check your Hosting and see what port you should be using. It's normally 21, but some hosts don't use that port. Keep clicking 'Test'. Now if that still doesn't work you might have the username and FTP Address around the wrong way. Or some require just the domain name not ftp dot, and the domain name. And some of them, in terms of user names can deal with it without the user name, without the @ in the longer url in there.

Another thing to do, sometimes your FTP address can be an IP address. You might get that from-- if you don't get one of these you might have-- if you don't get an FTP address sometimes you might get an IP address. I don't know how it gets an IP address. They look like a whole lot of numbers, and a whole lot of full stops. Use that instead. I'm going to cancel this, I don't want to wreck my current one. Now if it's still not working, you've done it, you've hit 'Test', and it says, "Not successfully connected". One of the other problems that I've had, that is fixed it is - I go to 'Cancel', and I cancel this, and I hit 'Done'. - is under 'Dreamweaver', 'Preferences' If you're using a PC, it's under 'Edit', 'Preferences'. There's an option in here, under 'Site'. And I know, when I was working with the GoDaddy host, if I have the 'FTP time out' really short it didn't have enough time to actually connect. So it had to be set to '30'. I think at some stage I set it to a lower Time Out for some other client because it was hanging for a long time, and then disconnecting. I changed it to lower, and it wrecked some other host. So just make sure that its seconds are up high. Try 30 seconds, it should work. That's worked for me so far. You might try a little higher if that's still not working. If that doesn't fix the problem make sure you come back and reset it back to whatever the default was. I think 30 is the default. I'm going to close it down.

The next thing to check is changing your wireless network. At the moment I'm connected to the work wireless so that means that my Dreamweaver is trying to go through the router and out to GoDaddy, the host. Sometimes the routers can be a bit ruthless and not let Dreamweaver through. So the easy thing to check, because it might not be your settings, it might be that the router is a bit too security conscious. So the easy thing to do is, in my case I just take my laptop home, and plug and connect it to the wireless at home and try it there. Or if you're stuck at work, or home, try setting up a wireless network via your cell phone and put on the hotspot, and connect via that. And if it starts working, that means it's your modem's problem. And if it's your modem's problem what you need to do is find out the manufacturer of your modem, and the model number. And then figure out how to get inside your modem and change the Port Forwarding. You have to do some Googling to do it. You also need to Google 'Port Forwarding' in Dreamweaver to figure out what Port needs to get forwarded.

To be honest, I found my way through, and got it working on my home router. That's something you might have to do and if you do get it going, and if you know more about routers for Port Forwarding, and those sorts of things, chuck your notes in the comments. That would be great to help anybody else in the future.

So you still haven't got it working. You changed the wireless networks, and it's still broken. That means it's probably Dreamweaver, not your router. So what you can do is use a different FTP program to test it. A really good one, probably the most common one is something called FileZilla. So go to FileZilla, download it. Essentially what it is it's this tiny bit of Dreamweaver that uploads the file. So when we go 'Site', 'Put', it takes control of that. You have to do it manually. So FileZilla is a separate program. And what it means is, is that you're connected to your Local drive, and its whole job, its only job is to upload files from your hard drive up to your remote site, and you could just use that. If it starts working, you put in the settings in there. It starts working, beautiful. Then we know it's Dreamweaver's problem and you might just bypass Dreamweaver's function for uploading, and just use FileZilla, completely separate from Dreamweaver, not connected at all. If FileZilla starts working for you, happy days. It's a bit of a hop along to use it. Hey, it's getting uploaded, and that's working.

Now the next thing is to plead ignorance and call your hosting company, and ask for help. Let's say, I called the hosting company, GoDaddy today. Got through after 2 minutes of waiting, that's not bad. And I got a great guy named Scott to help me out with some bits I was doing on my server. I just plead ignorance, I just said I'm not sure what I' doing, please help me, and amazing, it was free. He took five minutes to sort out. And he helped me get some server problems sorted out. So don't be afraid to call your hosting company. So many people pay for hosting, and then never call them. They've got a help desk, yes, spend some time. Chat with them, tell them what you're doing with Dreamweaver, and the problems you're having and the things you tested, and hopefully they can help you out.

Now you might have gone through my whole list, and it's still not working, and you have to go off and Google, and find something to try get it going. Say you do get it going. Please drop how you fixed it in Dreamweaver. I'm just showing things that I've had problems with in the past and how I got around it, but if you've got something else that you found was a really good fix, or a little quirk about your computer, and your wireless network, let us know in the comments, and we can share with everybody so we can get on with our lovely websites online by FTP. All right, let's see you in the next video.