I write code for a growing number of clients who host their sites with GoDaddy and Wild West Domains (GoDaddy’s Resller Program). My aresnal includes Photoshop & Expression Web (not a huge fan of Dreamweaver) for visual layout, Filezilla for uploading, and Notepad++ for coding (tried nppFTP plugin for FTP, that didn’t last long, too “buggy”).
Frequently I would be uploading a files after making my initial FTP connection and within a few minutes the connection would time out and I would be unable to reconnect. I figured since it was a shared hosting environment, their hardware and/or software firewall was just being very cautious. After cloning my PC’s IP address in my local router and restarting my cable modem (force renew my IP), I was able to resume work. Inevitably the issue would creep back up quickly.
One thing I tried was to modify the “Maximum Number of Connections” setting in FileZilla’s Site Manager under the “Transfer Settings” tab. This seemed to help but not much.
Today, I followed the same steps as usual (cursing GoDaddy the whole time). And ended up being blocked on both IP addresses I was logging into FTP with. Needless to say, I was very agitated at this point since I could not finish the incomplete modifications I had just uploaded to a live client domain!
I decided to re-examine my Filezilla settings to see if I could change something else to get past this. Under the previously mentioned tab in the Site Manager, my “Transfer Mode” was set to “Default’. I didn’t think it would help, but I switched it to “Passive”. After getting yet another IP from my ISP, I was able to transfer 5 times as much as before without any issues and complete the project. Yay!
Limiting the maximum number of connections may have been unnecessary, but I’m leaving that setting alone. As far as I can tell, setting the transfer mode to passive solved the problem. Hopefully this information keeps you from pulling out your hair as much as I did 😉
You *really* should be using SFTP, which is the secure(encrypted) version of FTP.
http://community.godaddy.com/help/article/4942
The client I use is WinSCP Portable which you can find on portableapps.com
Also for shell access you want to be using SSH not telnet.
Look for PuttyPortable on portableapps.com for that one.
Some time after the original posting, I started using Dreamweaver, though I do not rely on any of the code generators (which is what I was mostly against), for the code formatting benefits. I usually don’t have any problems, but some of GoDaddy’s servers configurations still cause hiccups.
In regards to using SFTP over FTP, GoDaddy *should* work without issue either way. While your point is valid, unless you are dealing with sensitive content, SFTP is overkill in my opinion.
I look at it this way… if you wouldn’t send the information in an unencrypted email, use SFTP or SSH. Otherwise, normal FTP is perfectly fine for everyday purposes.
You said that you could transfer “5 times as much” with forced passive mode – does that mean that you got temporarily blocked after that as well? This is killing me, and I don’t remember this issue with other Go Daddy sites before.
With the particular hosting account in question, yes blocking is still an issue. I don’t have to work on that client’s server often, so I have not continued trying to debug GoDaddy’s botched configuration on that server.