FTP website to Host Web - "The selected folder is not published to http:///website.com"

Question
1

Hi
I created my webpage with Sparkle and now I want to upload it to my Web Host (HostPapa).
I used the Sparkle APP, select publish, enter the ftp logins (I can see the directories).

Then I select the directory where I want to save my webpage and then … I keep getting the message:

“The selected folder is not published to http:///website.com”

What to do?

Thank you for your support.

2

Email us and we’ll take a look. Web hosts are all different, and sometimes the domain status is the issue, so there’s no “one size fits all” answer. In fact most of the time into just works.

3

Hi Duncan,

I am having the same issue with Bluehost. I followed directions on the Bluehost C Panel to install Cyberduck to configure the FTP client. But this hasn’t sorted the issue.

Cheers

4

Email a screenshot of where sparkle gets stuck to feedback@sparkleapp.com

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5

@craigmaiden, I’m thinking it might be an SSL Certificate issue? More and more hosting platforms are clamping down on this as it is a requirement by the major search engines to be using the “https” protocol to make sure the web goes in that direction.

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6

Duncan has been great walking me through how I might be able to solve the issue. I haven’t resolved it yet. I am going to write to my servers support and see what they think. They usually opt out any problems. Cheers @FlaminFig

7

Just a final note as this is now solved.

The problem, which I have seen with other customers who use a specific flavor of web hosting control panel, is the default FTP account will be “jailed” in a branch of the web hosting space where no website is configured, and from Sparkle’s point of view (or any FTP client), there’s no way to navigate up and go to the website root folder.

The fix is to create a new FTP account in the web hosting control panel, with no sub-folder restriction, so that it is possible to browse to the correct folder (or for Sparkle to auto detect it in many cases).

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8

Hello

I have the same problem. I changed the host company and they had copy all files from one ftp to another ftp. After that i changed login and password in sparkle and i achieved statement "The selected folder is not published to http://www.website.com”. It is something wrong on my site or on the site of company host?

9

The message comes up for a number of reasons. You can send us a screenshot of that to feedback@sparkleapp.com and we’ll figure it out.

10

Hello I had this issue and Duncan’s solution worked for me: at my hosting company’s control panel, add a new ftp user - get the new user name and PW and when I put those into Sparkle it worked.
-Alden

11

Right, this is one of the two most frequent problems, also mentioned in the publishing documentation:

https://sparkleapp.com/docs/exporting.html

It is however not the only issue.

12

Creating a new FTP user solved my “The selected folder is not published…” issue.

13

Hi duncan - resurrecting this question…

For our site, we have ftp setup in such a way that we upload to a sandbox folder, then a script that can only be run by an admin, pushes the updated site to the actual public site folder. No problem getting there via FTP / local export, however Sparkle clearly doesn’t like it - same error as above…

Just wondering if there’s a chance in the world you’d consider adding a checkbox “yes, I understand some site code validation cannot happen, publish anyway?” or some such - perhaps I’m missing something, however if this is in fact the only reason that Sparkle doesn’t like putting it online this way, I’d be pleased if I could publish directly.

Our setup is done for security reasons - CTO’s decision and I can’t simply create a new user account that can get to the site root.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Cheers,

Dave

Screenshot 2023-11-11 at 13.14.15
Screenshot 2023-11-11 at 13.14.151664×994 171 KB

14

Hello everyone!
I’m also having this same problem about the “selected folder is not published to…”
I’m having a frustrating time trying to get through this.
I’ve add no problem with Spatkle in the past, but now that I’m creating a new website, I’m blocked with this problem.
Do I really need to create a new FTP ? and how?
Can anyone help me with this?

15

Hi @Erik1,

there’s unfortunately a combination of factors that can lead to this issue.

The is the scenario we’re working with:

  • the web hosting provider has a server somewhere on the internet
  • file transfer (for publishing) happens via the FTP protocol
  • web hosting (for serving a website to the world) happens via the HTTP protocol
  • the FTP and HTTP (web) servers are entirely separate, with different setups, they only communicate by placing the web content in the same server side folder
  • for example the FTP server requires authentication (so only you can publish updates to your site), whereas the HTTP server is anonymous (so anybody can view the site)
  • also HTTP servers have a specific configuration for which folder is used to load your website from (sometimes called the “document root”), and conversely FTP servers associate a default folder for an FTP user account, but it’s unrelated to the HTTP server one

When setting up publishing, Sparkle wants to confirm the FTP folder is the same as the HTTP folder, and it does this by writing a small file (say 123.html) using FTP, then goes to the web address you entered (so via the HTTP server) to load domain.com/123.html. If the file loads successfully, Sparkle knows the folder is correct. Additionally Sparkle tries a few “well known” folder names, such as public_html or your domain name, as places where the FTP server might interact with the HTTP server in the same folder.

However if the test file doesn’t load, there can be a number of issues.

So with all that in mind, these are the top issues, roughly in order of likelyhood:

  • the HTTP server folder has an unusual name, and Sparkle has been unable to detect it; this can be solved by manually navigating the folders to the folder containing the website
  • the FTP user account doesn’t have access to the folder where the HTTP server requires the files for your domain to be located; sadly this is the default configuration for FTP accounts of some large web hosts, the way to solve it is to go to the web hosting control panel and create a new FTP user account, ensuring you clear out any pre-defined folder restriction
  • your domain might not be pointing to the server you are connecting to via FTP, so the setup will never succeed; this generally happens when moving between web hosts, and the fix is generally just to wait for the domain name propagation and server setup to be complete
  • the HTTP server might have a configuration that prevents Sparkle’s detection from working at all; in this case you need to get in touch over email so we can look at it in detail

Generally a screenshot of Sparkle stuck on that error helps because we can look at the domain name, check what we see in the browser and if it matches what’s shown in the screenshot.

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