I was a plumber in Toledo for thirty-eight years. I retired in 1997, and last fall my grandson Thomas's scout troop needed somebody to put their pages on the Internet. Their scoutmaster, Tony Broady, asked at a meeting whether any of the parents knew how to do "the FTP." Nobody did, so I said I'd learn it. I figured a computer couldn't be harder than a sixty-year-old boiler in a church basement.

I was mostly right. FTP is plumbing. Your computer is the house. Your GeoCities.us space is the main out in the street. The FTP program is the pipe between them, and your files are the water. Once I thought of it that way, the rest came easy, and I've since hooked up four other people. This is the work order I'd write for you.

(The GeoCities.us clip art doesn't have a plumber. The fellow with the jackhammer is the closest they had. He's digging down to the main.)

First, do you need FTP at all? If you only change a page or two at a time, the File Manager in your Member Center will upload up to ten files at a time right from your Web browser, no other program needed. That's a faucet washer. FTP is for when you're doing the whole bathroom: a lot of files, or a whole site you built on your own computer.

For that you need one tool, an FTP program. I've used all three of these:

You can find them on the shareware sites, and on the CDs that come stuck to the front of computer magazines. Read the license when you install. Free for home use means home use.

Every job starts with the spec sheet. These come straight from the GeoCities.us File Manager page. Copy them onto an index card and tape it to the side of your monitor. Not the password. The password stays in your head.

Step 1. Shut the water off first. Before you touch anything, make a copy of your whole Web folder: onto a floppy, or into a second folder named something like "backup." FTP will put a new file right on top of an old one with the same name, and it doesn't always ask twice. I've never once opened up a wall I couldn't close again, because I always knew where the shutoff was.

Step 2. Connect. Start WS_FTP LE. A box called Session Properties comes up. Fill it in from your spec card:

• Profile Name: anything you like. Mine says GeoCities.us.
• Host Name/Address: ftp.geocities.us
• Host Type: leave it on Automatic detect.
• User ID and Password: your member name and password. Capitals count.

Click OK. If you aren't already on line, you'll hear the modem dial. Then a few lines of chatter scroll by at the bottom while the two computers shake hands.

Step 3. Look at both ends of the pipe. The window splits in two. The left side says Local System. That's your computer, the house. The right side says Remote Site. That's your GeoCities.us space, the main. On the left, double-click your way into the folder where you keep your Web files.

Step 4. Pick hot or cold. At the bottom are the buttons ASCII and Binary. (There's also one called Auto that's supposed to pick for you by the end of the file name. I trust it about as much as I trust those drain cleaners on the TV.) Sending .html? Click ASCII. Sending a picture? Click Binary. Every time.

Step 5. Open the valve. Click the file on the left, then click the arrow in the middle that points to the right, toward the main. A little box shows it going. When it's done, the file shows up on the right side.

Step 6. Check for leaks. Open your page in your Web browser, hold down Shift and click Reload, and look it over: every picture, every link. A good plumber runs the water before he leaves.

Step 7. Close up. Click Close to hang up, then Exit. Then put your tools away.

Hot and cold lines. ASCII and binary are the hot and cold lines, and you don't cross them. In ASCII mode the FTP program fixes up the end of every line of text as it goes, because Windows computers and the Unix computer on the other end mark the ends of lines differently. That's what you want for a page. But a picture isn't made of lines. Send a GIF as ASCII, and the program "fixes" it anyway, and what comes out the other end is scrambled. You get a broken picture, and you'll swear you uploaded it, and you did. Send it again as binary. (Crossing the other way, a page sent as binary, usually still shows fine, but it's a slow drip under the sink. Do it right.)

The inspector. The computer at the other end runs Unix, and Unix is as fussy as a building inspector about capital letters. To your Windows computer, Index.HTML and index.html are the same file. To the inspector they're two different files, and only one of them is your front door. Name everything in small letters and you'll never fail inspection. While you're at it, no spaces in file names: call it my-dog.html, not my dog.html.

Measure twice, cut once. Before you click that arrow, look at the top of the right side and make sure you're in the folder you think you're in. I once put the troop's whole camping page in the wrong folder and spent an evening wondering why nothing changed.

Something leaking? Turn to Leaks and Clogs, the troubleshooting sheet.