February 5, 2006

Dreamweaver FTP Can't Connect

As I've mentioned before, Dreamweaver's FTP works fantastically well. No need to switch to another FTP program to FTP files that you're already looking at in DW's tree view.* Except that, in some circumstances, DW simply will not connect to the server, no matter that you've followed all the usual instructions.

Thanks to Craig Lido for pointing me to Macromedia's Dreamweaver TechNote:

Add a colon and the port number to the end of the FTP host name in the FTP Host text box. The FTP host name will appear similarly to the following examples:
-www.myhost.com:80
-123.456.789.012:80

Much appreciated.

Related posts:

  1. Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 … soon
  2. Dreamweaver vs. GoLive
  3. Dreamweaver 8 and MX 2004 Tips
  4. Changing Dreamweaver Default Extensions
  5. Dreamweaver – Flashing Divs

47 Comments to "Dreamweaver FTP Can't Connect"

  1. Becky Bohman says:
    Comment posted on 02/23/09 @ 2:10 pm

    I just switched hosting companies and am having difficulties connecting to the server through Dreamweaver. I have ALWAYS used Dreamweaver for coding, designing, uploading, etc. but for some reason with this new server, it absolutely will not accept my username and password. I've connected using FileZilla just fine using the same login info, but for some reason Dreamweaver is being stubborn. Any ideas please?

  2. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 02/23/09 @ 2:17 pm

    A few things to try:

    - make sure you're using the correct username and password
    - are you
    - try the tips in my article above
    - In Sites > Manage Sites > Edit > Remote Info, deselect "Use Secure FTP (SFTP)

    One of those ought to do it. Let me know what happens.

  3. moira says:
    Comment posted on 03/16/09 @ 10:05 pm

    I have been using an old version – Dreamweaver 2 – which has been great – and now I am having ftp problems. I have tried all of the above and I still get a message – host found connecting – and then – an ftp error occurred – connect make connection to host.
    I have rung mine host and want me to use their Zilla thing as well which I have to buy. Why would I when D/W has been perfect. Hope you can help.
    Cheers Moira

  4. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 03/17/09 @ 12:43 am

    A couple of questions: have you switched hosts recently? If not, have they changed something? Are you trying to upload via a secure connection (SFTP) that's being rejected?

    You can always try Filezilla, which is free. If nothing else, that may give you some clues.

    Thing is, I'm not sure whether FTP protocols may have changed. I used WS_FTP '95 for years before upgrading, and then using DW's internal FTP functions. So I'm not sure whether there may be something different with respect to FTP functions this much later on.

  5. Joshua Solomon says:
    Comment posted on 03/17/09 @ 6:54 pm

    I was having the same issue with Dreamweaver not connecting to my site via ftp while Filezilla was having no problems. Here's what I did:

    Go into: Manage Sites

    Select Your Site

    Click Edit

    Select the Advanced Tab

    Select Remote Info from the list on the left.

    Then in the ftp host enter:
    yourdomain.com:21
    or
    your Static IP address followed by :21
    ex. 192.168.0.1:21

    NOW HERE IS THE KEY!! Change the FTP Time Out setting

    Click the button that says "Firewall Settings"

    Find "FTP time out:"

    Replace the 2 Seconds with 10 Seconds.

    Then try it if it still doesn't work check the "Use passive FTP" check box and try again.

  6. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 03/17/09 @ 7:03 pm

    Port number 21? Interesting; mine's already set for port 21 in the firewall settings, but not in the host name.

    Thanks, Joshua.

  7. john says:
    Comment posted on 05/8/09 @ 3:08 pm

    i had the same prob. filezilla connects but not DW. i only changed my timeout, under "firewall settings" from 10 secs to 60 secs and that fixed it.

  8. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 05/12/09 @ 1:17 am

    Excellent. Great tip, John.

  9. Steve Douglas says:
    Comment posted on 05/29/09 @ 11:07 am

    Thank you thank you thank you! Adding the colon and the port made DW CS3 immediately connect! I'd been getting the dorky error dialogs for over an hour until I found this site and your suggestion.

    Thanks again!

  10. Janell says:
    Comment posted on 07/23/09 @ 8:56 am

    I've been using dreamweaver (MX2004) for over 2 years now with absolutely no problems connecting to the ftp. Within the last 3 days, it's gone to hell; and nothing will connect – I get the "failed to connect to server" or "server unavailable/not accepting new connections" and occasionally the "timed out" error. I'm curious if it's a server issue, as I've tried connecting from a different FTP program with no luck as well (although it still works occasionally more often than DW does); but according to my host, nothing of the sort is going on with them.

    I've tried all of the above tricks and gotten nowhere. Considering this is my business website, I'm more than a bit peeved. Any ideas?

  11. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 07/23/09 @ 2:48 pm

    That's odd, if another FTP program also can't connect to the server. I have occasionally had a problem uploading PDF files with DW (in which case I upload them with WS_FTP), but that's about it.

    What types of files are you trying to upload?

    Otherwise, if it's not something along these lines, I'd guess that it may be a server issue — but, in any case, it's hardly convenient not to be able to update your business website.

  12. Bob says:
    Comment posted on 08/25/09 @ 10:29 am

    Woohoo "Use passive ftp fixed an issue a customer of our ISP was having – TY

  13. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 08/25/09 @ 10:39 am

    Excellent! Glad it helped.

  14. Fred says:
    Comment posted on 10/6/09 @ 6:06 am

    I have tried all of your suggestions. Still no connection. Anything else I can try? Outside of re-installing.

  15. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 10/6/09 @ 6:14 am

    I'm not sure that reinstalling will help; if Dreamweaver is working otherwise but you can't FTP to the server, that's where the error lies.

    If you've tried all the other suggestions, one thing I'd suggest would be to contact your web host. For instance, it may be that your host has specified something else than :80:

    -www.myhost.com:80
    -123.456.789.012:80

    Something else I recently encountered: a new server was configured a little differently than "normal" and I, of course, was trying different methods of connecting via Dreamweaver (click, click, click in rapid succession) … so the server ended up blocking me! LOL. At any rate, the upline web host sorted it out and all is fine.

    Let me know how it goes.

  16. Fred says:
    Comment posted on 10/7/09 @ 5:36 am

    Hey Diane,

    Contacted my host. Tried the port. It didn't work.
    It's so frustrating. :(

    Thanks,

    Fred

  17. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 10/7/09 @ 5:40 am

    Okay. Let's start here: who is your web host?

  18. omar says:
    Comment posted on 11/4/09 @ 3:21 pm

    im having the same problem and im with godaddy

  19. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 11/4/09 @ 3:31 pm

    Okay. In Dreamweaver, in the Site definition (in the Advanced tab), the HTTP address should be something like this:

    http://yoursite.com/public_html/
    or http://yoursite.com/www/
    or http://yoursite.com/htdocs/

    Normally, you can find this info simply by FTPing in to your web hosting account.

    The thing with GoDaddy is finding your actual server path, which isn't obvious when you FTP in. Let's say your username is xyz444. Your server path for Dreamweaver might be:

    http://yoursite.com/home/content/x/y/z/html/
    -or-
    http://yoursite.com/home/content/x/y/z/maybesomenumbers/html/

    If you don't have this information, call GoDaddy. Ignore any advice they give you that the problem is your "web designer" or "Dreamweaver". If you get the right info, the above should work.

    Unfortunately, not all the GoDaddy tech support folks are aware of the above.

  20. Phil says:
    Comment posted on 11/18/09 @ 6:45 pm

    OMG I\'m so new at this. I was entering the site as ftp://mydomain.com
    I changed it to mydomain.com:21 and that fixed it. I figured I would put that out there in case someone else made that mistake.

  21. Adrian Guerra II says:
    Comment posted on 01/15/10 @ 9:39 am

    Copy the actual IP address with port number (ex. 192.22.33.01:21) fixed the problem for me. It seems as though Dreamweaver is not changing the domain name to the ip address after submitting for test.

  22. Chris says:
    Comment posted on 01/27/10 @ 8:59 am

    Ok for a few people out there I tried absolutely everything and the only thing that worked was to use the ip address instead of the ftp server name http://ftp.mysite.com for example.

    I am on Mac OSX 10.5 using Dreamweaver CS4. It seems to be a bug. I could connect to all my servers via my other ftp client and some servers using DWCS4 but not ones that all began with the same server name. Anything that was http://ftp.mysite.com for example would not connect.

    Like Adrian it appears the ftp address was not getting converted to an IP address.

  23. Chris says:
    Comment posted on 01/27/10 @ 9:01 am

    Note to moderator please remove above urls in my post as one links to a real ftp area. My bad :/

  24. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 01/27/10 @ 12:54 pm

    I switched it to "mysite.com".

  25. enolam says:
    Comment posted on 01/27/10 @ 2:55 pm

    thank you all / close to pulling my hair out

  26. Anshul says:
    Comment posted on 03/28/10 @ 12:11 pm

    Thanks a lot guys! Switching to using passive ftp solved my problem.
    Cheers !!

  27. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 03/28/10 @ 12:14 pm

    You're welcome, Anshul. Glad it helped. :)

  28. Gdub says:
    Comment posted on 04/15/10 @ 8:17 pm

    Passive FTP worked for me – excellent tip after searching online for about 30 minutes. Also added yourdomain.com:21

    Thanks again.

  29. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 04/16/10 @ 1:08 am

    Cool. Glad it helped. :)

  30. Michael says:
    Comment posted on 05/18/10 @ 8:02 am

    I could not get dreamweaver to connect to host no matter what!

    I solved the problem by converting my 'FTP Host Address' to an 'IP address' (i.e. what was 'ftp.blahblah.com' is now '208.285.144.12′).

    You can convert your Host address to an IP easily using this website:

    http://www.hcidata.info/host2ip.htm

    Brilliant! Thanks to Adrian and Chris above!

  31. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 05/18/10 @ 8:20 am

    Good point, Michael. I've often used IP addresses for FTP host purposes.

    Not sure (not enough coffee yet) how that would work if the website is on a shared IP. It's *possible* that it would work based on the username/password combination.

  32. stephanie says:
    Comment posted on 07/15/10 @ 3:26 pm

    I have a problem similar to what is posted here. Any help is badly needed.

    I use DWMX2004 on a G5 Mac using OSX10.5.8.

    Working great no problems at all. Then all of a sudden FTP won't connect. To any servers, godaddy, yahoo, none.

    I do not have a router or any type firewall, nothing has changed on my computer, noting downloaded or added, nothing at all

    I have tried every type fix above and then some all I get is "An FTP error occurred – cannot make connection to host. The server is not responding."

    Oddly the error comes up immediately, it doesn't go thru the "trying to connect" progress bar. Its like it doesn't even try, just errors immediately.

    I took my DWMX2004 install disk to my friends house he kindly let me install it on his mac computer (fresh) and it connected perfectly.

    So something in my dreamweaver operating files corrupt and not attempting FTP or something blocking it?

    But what would cause this? I have scanned for viruses, etc. finding nothing.

    I have no idea where to even start looking. I maybe need to uninstall DWMX2004 from my computer but not sure how to get it all out so I can install it fresh, maybe that will do it.

    thank you very much any help is appreciated i am pulling my hair out!

  33. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 07/15/10 @ 4:45 pm

    Okay. This is a nice puzzle. :)

    When you say "all of a sudden FTP won't connect", do you mean Dreamweaver's FTP, or any FTP? Have you tried connecting to a server with another FTP program?

    If another FTP program will connect, but DW won't, then it sounds like a reinstall may be the answer.

  34. CGR says:
    Comment posted on 07/22/10 @ 5:13 am

    Just had this with Dreamweaver MX, it was strange because it's worked fine with the configuration since it was installed, I was even able to test the ftp settings.

    However I do have to enter in /httpdocs/ in the host directory, not sure if that affects in any way?

    Couldn't upload a file, but I was able to browse to the remote view of the site, when I browsed back to the local view it worked again.

    Although lately I have been getting a problem with Dreamweaver losing my FTP username/logon

    Time to upgrade to the latest version methinks!

  35. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 07/22/10 @ 6:08 am

    Hi CGR,

    You can save your Site settings:
    Site > Manage Sites > Export

    Then save it somewhere. When it drops out, just do:
    Site > Manage Sites > Import

    As to why your DWMX suddenly couldn't connect — was it to a server/website where it had previously worked?

    And, yes, you'd have to put in /httpdocs (without the last slash). Otherwise, you may find yourself uploading to the directory above the website root directory.

    Another thing that could be weird is that perhaps you tried to upload and overwrite a file that had been uploaded by root (in which case it wouldn't work). Or perhaps it was a temporary server glitch, or a temporary lapse in your Internet connectivity. Hard to say without knowing more.

  36. AR says:
    Comment posted on 08/4/10 @ 10:03 am

    I have just bumped into the same problem. Thought it might have been something to do with my system so did system restore and it's still giving me same error. But it works perfectly fine with FileZila

    I've tried doing everything suggested in this discussion so far : checking username/password, converting to IP address and adding relative port number, switching passive ftp and SFTP but no luck at all.

    Since I've just switched to new host, I've just opened support ticket with them hoping to solve this issue because it is truly annoying.

  37. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 08/4/10 @ 11:01 am

    Who's the web host? For one, GoDaddy requires special setups; see Comment #19.

  38. AR says:
    Comment posted on 08/4/10 @ 2:34 pm

    I have just switched to Host Media UK last week.

    Just tried the comment #19 way by adding the extensions but it doesn't seem to go anywhere. One thing I've noticed is that when I test it using my site's IP address and Port number it then gives me another error saying "Dreamweaver could not connect because the server is down or not accepting connection"

  39. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 08/4/10 @ 2:37 pm

    Okay. Comment #19 was for GoDaddy hosting. I would check with your web host, as there may be something different about the FTP setup. But the "server is down or not accepting connection" does not sound good.

    I saw that you tried passive FTP and SFTP. Since that didn't work, I'd check with your host.

  40. Rizal says:
    Comment posted on 08/5/10 @ 10:27 am

    i am still having same the problem.. an error can not find the host? any ideas….

  41. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 08/5/10 @ 12:11 pm

    Hard to tell. Have you tried any of the solutions posted above?

  42. JG says:
    Comment posted on 08/7/10 @ 9:54 am

    I seem to be having an issue with connecting to FTP through Dream Weaver CS4 on Mac OSX version 10.5.7. I was uploading fine to my website through Dream Weaver. I then decided to redo the site to make it better and now for the life of me I can't connect anymore.

    It doesn't even look like its trying to connect, the error appears instantly. I merely click test and it says can't connect. There is no wait time, changing the time out time did nothing.

    I have tried the IP address and nothing. I have tried the ftp address and nothing. I have changed my password even to see if I was typing it wrong and still nothing.

    I honestly don't think its even trying to connect. I have been at this for a few days now and I'm pretty close to losing my mind. I paid a lot of money to get a host and domain name through Godaddy.com and its just not working.

    Any ideas as how I should approach this?

  43. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 08/7/10 @ 11:35 am

    Hi, JG. I don't have a Mac, so I can't advise there — but I've helped clients with Macs connect via Dreamweaver, so I don't think that's the issue.

    You didn't mention when you got the GoDaddy hosting, but their FTP setup is a little different. See the second part of my Comment #19:

    The thing with GoDaddy is finding your actual server path, which isn't obvious when you FTP in. Let's say your username is xyz444. Your server path for Dreamweaver might be:

    Root Directory: /

    Web URL: http://yoursite.com/home/content/x/y/z/html/
    -or-
    http://yoursite.com/home/content/x/y/z/somenumbers/html/

    I got that information from GoDaddy techs — but, to be honest, they don't all have that information.

    See if that helps. If not, I would call GoDaddy.

  44. AR says:
    Comment posted on 08/10/10 @ 2:11 pm

    Alright I got mine to work now after opening up a support ticket with my host.

    Baisically change your http://ftp.yourwebsite.com to IP address like mentioned above, in your host directory just put /public_html/ and use passive FTP.

    Now it works perfectly fine for me so if anyone is still having trouble try it out, might work out for you as well.

  45. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 08/10/10 @ 2:21 pm

    Thanks! Although I don't think this would work in any case:

    http://ftp.yourwebsite.com

    It would have to be something like:
    http://ftp.yourwebsite.com
    or
    yourwebsite.com

    But … whatever works. :)

  46. AR says:
    Comment posted on 08/10/10 @ 4:36 pm

    Oh ye apologies, it came out wrong.

    I meant to say change your ftp host from http://ftp.yourwebsite.com to it's IP address

  47. Diane Vigil says:
    Comment posted on 08/10/10 @ 4:46 pm

    Yes, I understood. Regardless of the IP address issue, I'm just saying that putting the http:// in front of http://ftp.yourwebsite.com will not work in any case.

    EDITED: Oh, I see what's happening. When we write ftpDOTsomething, WordPress puts the http:// in front of it. (How annoying!)

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