Great for keeping web sites synchronized!
Written: Dec 04 '99 (Updated May 25 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Clean browsing interface, Synchronization feature
Cons: Synch interface could be cleaner
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| collin_ong's Full Review: FTP Voyager |
Update: 5/25/2000 - in my initial review of FTP Voyager, I praised the product for its good interface and powerful synchronization feature, but said that I had decided not to continue my registration due to the problems it had with working through my company's proxy server. RhinoSoft contacted me and offered me a free registration so I could try out their new Version 7 of FTP Voyager. I took them up on their offer and it has fixed my main gripe: it works reliably through my proxy server now. I am revising my review accordingly.
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I found FTP Voyager about a year ago when I started a web site and needed a program to upload the files to the web server that was hosting my site.
FTP Voyager provides a nice, friendly interface to transfer files. The default setup divides the application window into three horizontal panes with a toolbar up top. The top pane shows the directory listing of the remote site, the middle pane shows the local drives and directories, and the bottom pane shows a log of the commands it is sending to the remote server. At the directory panes look and operate just like Windows Explorer, which cus the learning curve. They have a expandable folder hierarchy on the left and file listings from the current directory on the right. Common shortcuts like F5 to refresh the directory list also work.
FTP Voyager stood out among all the Windows FTP clients because it offered synchronization between a local and a remote directory, which is extremely useful for maintaining a web site. Without this feature, you'll have to remember which directories or files changed and manually upload them. The synchronization feature is quite sophisticated and offers alot of options to control how it will compare remote and local files (name, creation date/time, modification date/time, size, etc). There are also options for how to handle the synchronization, like whether to delete or overwrite files, etc. You can also specify strings to exclude files that start with a certain string of characters. The only thing really missing from this feature is a "manual exclude" function so you can stop certain directories or files from being synchronized this session.
The program also includes a wide set of options for connection to FTP servers through proxy servers. This was also an important consideration for me since my workplace uses proxy servers to reach the outside net. While I previous had problems with flakey connections with version 5 of the FTP Voyager, the newest release (7.x) seems to have resolved them. Connections through my company proxy now work quite reliably. This is a god-send for using the synchronization feature, because now you can depend on all remote files being recognized properly and not showing up in the upload list.
Of course, there's always a new gripe, right? While the synch feature hasn't really changed in functionality since version 5, I guess before I was so busy fuming over the proxy problems that I never noticed the interface issues. When synchronizing a remote FTP site with a local directory, FTP Voyager pops up a ton of dialog boxes asking for confirmation whether it can overwrite this file, upload that file, etc. The problem is, it doesn't identify which directory it is talking about. For a web site with multitudes of files titled "index.htm," this is a real problem, because you can't tell which one you're deleting or sending to the bit bucket. I believe the proper way to implement this would be for the synch to display a "to do list" after it has compared the file lists, and allow the user to uncheck any operations that shouldn't be done. Don't get me wrong-- the synch feature is very useful, but, as always, could get better.
Apparently FTP Voyager is now being supported directly by its developer, RhinoSoft, not Deerfield Software. My dealings with Rhino have been much friendlier than those with Deerfield, which seemed more bureaucratic.
In conclusion, FTP Voyager offers a clean, easy to use interface with some sophisticated features like synchronization and the new version has much better performance through my proxy server. You should try it out to make sure it works consistently with your proxy server if you have one.
It is an invaluable tool for keeping web sites up to date with its synchronization feature. I have not found another FTP client with this feature yet.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
collin_ong
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Member: Collin Ong
Location: Sacramento, California
Reviews written: 97
Trusted by: 47 members
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