What is this WebInterface? (FAQ)

"I thought CrushFTP was an FTP server...what is this WebInterface thing?"

This is a common confusion with CrushFTP. Quick bit of history. CrushFTP 1.0 and 2.0 were strickly FTP servers. CrushFTP3 provided HTTP upload capability and some rudimentary HTML customizations. CrushFTP4 brought about a full scale WebInterface utilizing all the current technologies so that you can fully customize every aspect about it. Its not just an FTP server anymore.

The WebInterface allows users to access the files on your server with a WebBrowser. They can download, upload, rename delete, make directories, etc. All from a nice modern WebInterface. When they go to upload files to you, they get realtime feedback as to the speed of the transfer, a progress bar, and estimated time remaining. If you tried to do this without CrushFTP, you would have to have several custom PHP configurations, various config changes to your web server, PHP script files, and HTML / javascript. With CrushFTP, you double click on the application, and this is all immediately available without any other work. Talk about easy! And that's not all, there is also the CrushUploader that provides drag and drop support and compression for file transfers. Just keep reading.

"What makes CrushFTP's WebInterface special?"
First, lets talk about how customizable it is. Sure you can jsut enable it and go, but if you have someone who is up on their HTML standards, they can really go a long way with it. The layout of it, the color schemes, graphics & logos...everything can be modified. It just takes editing the XSL file and the changes take affect right away.

Uploading to the WebInterface is portentially faster than any other protocol. This is because it has a built in CrushUploader that will zip the files you are sending on the fly. Say you have a folder with 100 images, and text files in it (like a website). When you upload that with a normal FTP client, it has to send each file individually. If the file is big, things go as fast as your connection can handle. But when you start getting hundreds of small files, it can take a long time to upload each tiny file as much of the time is taken by the setup of the transfer and not by the transfer itself. The CrushUploader allows you to drag and drop, copy and paste, or "Browse..." for the files to upload. You can then choose to upload them as a ".ZIP" or normal. If your uploading a single large file, use "Normal", otherwise, you are probably better off using "Auto Zip". The "zip" feature doesn't make you wait while it builds a .zip file of your files before the upload starts. It zips directly to the CrushFTP server, no local files are ever made, and there is no delay before the upload starts. On my demo site, I have a folder with 400 files in it. It takes about 2 seconds to upload all 400 files. They are all small, but if they were uploaded "normally", then they would take close to 7 minutes! The zipping not only benefits multiple files being uploaded, but it also saves bandwidth allowing you to upload bigger files in less time.

http://www.crushftp.com/demo.html

And it goes both ways. You can also select a folder, or several files to download and click the ".ZIP" button. You will get a single .zip of those items generated on the fly directly to you. Otherwise it could get pretty painful clicking on 400 items individually... Then simply decompress the .zip you downloaded and you have allt he files you wanted!

The WebInterface supports resume downloads, and the CrushUploader supports resuming uploads as well.

"But if users are uploading .zip files, I have to decompress them before I can access them, right?"

Actually there is a built in plugin to handle this called the "AutoUnzip" plugin. You can access it in the Preferences of CrushFTP. You set it up to decompress uploaded .zip files once they finish. So a user will upload a .zip, then CrushFTP will decompress it and delete the original file. It will all be transparent to you and the user. Its an end to end solution allowing for compressed fast transfers.

"What is WebDAV?"
WebDAV is another part of the WebInterface. If you have heard of Apple's iDisk, it is essentially WebDAV. You connect from the OS X Finder to a WebDAV server and can mount it just like any other server on your desktop. You can read, and write to it, open files and edit them directly. So there is no need to use a web browser, or an FTP client. You can't get any more integrated or natural feeling to your end user than that. Check out the WebDAV server on my demo site to get a feel for how it works.


Easy to Configure!
And best of all, both WebDAV and the WebInterface run on one single port. No complex router / firewall configurations. Simply open up one port (default is 8080) for HTTP/WebDAV, or for SSL HTTPS / SSL WebDAV (default is 443). No issues with "passive" ports. Additionally from a server standpoint, you can monitor what your users are sending you better. FTP doesn't allow for the FTP client to tell you how big of file is being sent. WebDAV and the WebInterface do! So you will see estimated time remaining telling you how long you have to wait before the upload is complete!