Today I'm discovering Yahoo Web Hosting.
I've worked on Yahoo Web Hosting before.
However, this is the first time in a long
time.
The first thing I notice about Yahoo Web
Hosting is that I need to sign out of my
email address for Yahoo and sign back in
using my client's Yahoo email address.
So, apparently, Yahoo works a bit like
Google does. One account gets you into
many many things. Also, logging out of
one account and into another gets you
into an umbrella account that covers many
Yahoo products and services.
The umbrella account sort of approach seems
to be unique to both Google and Yahoo. Maybe
not entirely unique, however no one else seems
to glue so many services together under one
account
After switching email addresses, I googled Yahoo
hosting. This seems to take me directly to the
Yahoo Web Hosting control panel.
So, I'm guessing that you get an advertisement
for Yahoo Web Hosting if you are not already logged
into a Yahoo service, such as Yahoo Mail, and you
get your web hosting account if you are already
logged in.
Being used to working on websites, the first thing
I'll want is FTP access. Yahoo Web Hosting seems
to have one of those awful File Manager web
interfaces which is not so bad if you only work on
one website and you don't know what you are doing.
In other words, a great beginner's tool. However,
for me, uploading and downloading files through a
web interface is painfully tedious
So, I need an FTP access. Looks like this is the
path that will get me there:
Web Hosting Control Panel > Manage > Password Manager
OK. Discovering where to create an FTP account is
not too painful. Looks like it's just a matter of
creating a username and a password.
After you've created an FTP username and password,
the actual login process seems to be to treat your
username as if it were an email address. So, for
example, if your username is johndoe and your domain
is smalltownflowers.com, the FTP unsername would be
johndoe@smalltownflowers.com.
However, when creating the FTP login, you'll want to
create the johndoe part only and leave the domain
name off of the name you create. So, when creating
the FTP login, the username is shorter than when you
do actual FTP access, which requires that an @domainname.com
be added to the username.
Now for the first time, I see the following message.
FTP access was successfully enabled. To sign in to FTP, enter the user name "johndoe@smalltownflowers.com."
So, it is clear. I just needed to look around a bit.
The first thing I notice when I try to login is
that the following command line will not work:
ftp smalltownflowers.com
Whereas this command line actually reaches an FTP
server:
ftp ftp.smalltownflowers.com
So apparently you have to add the ftp subdomain
to the domain name to reach the ftp server at
all. Many web hosts allow you to leave off the
ftp subdomain. Yahoo is not one of them, apparently.
One thing I've learned in working with various
web hosting companies is each one is a little
bit different. Just like people, each web host
is slightly different.
Update: August 2, 2015
Today I set up a new Yahoo FTP login. All of
the above seems to be true except that Yahoo
no longer allows cleartext logins. The following
error message results if I login the same way I've done
in the past:
421 Sorry, cleartext sessions are not accepted
on this server.Login failed.
There's a simple fix. Just use SSL. Here's the
command line under Linux that gets me in:
lftp -u myusername@mydomainname.com,mysillypassword ftp.mydomainname.com -e "set ftp:ssl-allow yes"
Note that my ftp client used above is something called lftp. Note also that
I've faked my ftp username, password and domain name. So, really, the only thing
of interest above is the fact that I've set the switch ftp:ssl-allow to yes.
So, it looks like new ftp accounts at Yahoo Web Hosting need to use SSL. Interestingly
enough, my old ftp accounts for other domains at Yahoo Web Hosting continue to work.
So, I assume, going forward, only some kind of secure login that is not cleartext will be allowed
on new accounts attempting ftp login. While old accounts seem to be able to get away with clear
text, now accounts need SSL, or possibly, something else that I don't know about that Yahoo will
accept that is not cleartext. However, I myself have looked no further than SSL and know of no
other way to FTP into Yahoo Web Hosting with a new FTP account.
Ed Abbott
