FTP access question

[Guest]

I am working on a website hosted by sonic - I was given the FTP login by the site owner. When I log in via FTP, using the info given me, I see six folders; I was given the path nfs/WWW_pages/ouraccountname/www.sitename.com/ as the path to follow to get to the site files to upload via FTP. The 6 folders are : ftp, home, nfs, pub, usr, and var.

This seems more complex than it needs to be, and in navigating to our site I could see literally thousands of directories (other users accounts?) that I could not access, but I could still see them.

Shouldn't FTP give you access only to your own files, and NOT the ability to see all the folders on our shared server? Why would I need to even see all these other folders? It also seems insecure.

Feedback from others - do you all have access via FTP to see all the other client folders on the shared server? And to the administrators - why are they all visible to me?

[joemuller]

The /nfs/WWW_pages/... path is the full path for the site - you shouldn't need it for ftp. By default, you should see the home directory if you login to ftp.sonic.net as a specific user. We put a public_html entry in by default - it should take you straight to the web root(s) for their sites.

As for seeing other directories, they will be visible as folders, but the contents are not be readable by anyone other than the owner. The reason you see things this way is because everyone is on the same ftp server - ftp.sonic.net.