Hosting FTP server in your local machine

I use this method to share some files with my friends across the internet that is too large for Dropbox to handle. I tried hosting SQL data that's around 3G in size so I wanted to try FTP approach.

I installed XAMPP and it has useful stuffs for HTTP and FTP projects. I use it once with my PHP development, but that's it -- nothing FTP related. This is a tutorial on how to basically set-up FTP server locally to host data to be shared by friends, etc.

Once XAMPP is installed, we can directly go to the Control Panel.

Clicking the Admin for FileZilla FTP Server administration might alert you with Security Warning, just allow access to it. Click OK to Connect to Server. We are now presented with the FileZilla server Administration interface. Go to Edit->Users to add users. I usually just add temporary users who can access specific files to be shared periodically, that means I'll disable it once I'm done with the file share and also I don't usually leave FTP server running. Turning it off after use is a good practice.

Adding user is at the right side of the Dialog with Users group box. Click Add and type any user you want, I'm fond of having "test/tset" credentials so we'll use it here. Now check the Password check box to add password to the user. Type in "tset", as in reverse of test. That way it's easy to remember. :D You can of course choose your own username and password. To share file(s) or folder(s) to this user click Shared Folder. Add Shared Folder by clicking Add and browsing for the directory. I normally leave Read permission by default, at least the user can't do damage to the directory. Click OK and we are done!

Now type the credentials we created (test/tset) and you will be redirected to the shared directory we configured. Sample image below for confirmation. Of course, I didn't share my 3G SQL data, lol.

That's it! Have fun everyone!

Can't access IIS 7 from another Computer, not anymore!

Upon fresh installation of my Windows 7 box, I tried to install IIS so I can play with ASP.NET web and web setup project. One problem I encountered after the installation is, although I can access it locally via localhost or the IP Address (192.168.1.32, ie), I can't access it from my other boxes. I had 2 machines and other VMWare installed so I wanted to see from outside of the machine which IIS is installed. Failed miserably.

Not quite though. The simple solution is just to enable the port 80 on my Firewall. For Windows 7 it's in the Control Panel->System and Security->Windows Firewall and clicking the "Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall". Click the Change settings and check "World Wide Web Services (HTTP)". That's it, brilliant! :)