Have you ever wondered why some images won't show up on your site after you upload them? Or why your page coding looks REALLY crazy when you try to edit it? It's all because of Binary and ASCII modes. In this tutorial, I'll explain what each of them do, how to switch between them, and how to set a default.
Explaining Binary and ASCII Modes Binary and ASCII modes are two different modes for uploading files to your site. Each one is used for something different, and if you get them mixed up, your files might look funny.
Binary Mode: Binary is used to upload images, plain and simple. If you upload images in ASCII mode, they'll get corrupted and won't show up on your site.
ASCII Mode: ASCII mode is used to upload any text file. So anything that you've typed up should be transfered in this mode. If you don't, all your coding will end up bunched up and it'll make it really hard to edit them later.
Switching Between Binary and ASCII Mode In SmartFTP, there are a few icons above all your website files:
Find the ones boxed in red. The first one that's highlighted is the ASCII mode icon. If that's highlighted, all your text files will be ok when you upload them. The second one that says '10101' is for Binary mode. If you highlight that one, you're good to go when you upload your images. The third one is auto mode.. it's supposed to guess at what's right depending on the file type, but it's never worked for me. You can go ahead and ignore that one.
Setting a Default Mode*Note, this does not work with all versions of SmartFTP. Some of the newer ones set the default to Auto, and you cannot change it.* Usually when you first download SmartFTP, the default is Binary mode. That leads to a problem, because most peoples have a majority of text files that need to be uploaded. And it's hard to remember to always change your mode to ASCII every time you start up the program. So to set your default mode to ASCII, you'll need to go into your settings. Go to Tools> Settings, just like shown here:
You'll get this popup. Follow the below instructions to get to this screen:
Click to enlarge.
Next, in the left navigation, go down to 'ASCII / Binary', and at the top on the right, there's a drop down menu. In the dropdown, choose 'ASCII Transfer Type'. Click 'Ok', and you're done!
