Light and dark themes and the Options window in FTP by Zaweba

Settings in FTP by Zaweba are kept deliberately few. Most of what makes a site behave the way you want lives in that site's own settings in Site Manager, so the app-wide choices fit in a small Options window and a theme switch. It is worth a few minutes on day one to set them, because each one shapes how the rest of the app feels.

Light and dark themes

Choose a light or dark theme from the View menu. Which one suits you depends on your room, your screen and your eyes rather than on any right answer. A dark theme is easier on many people during long evening sessions in the code editor, and a light theme can be clearer in a bright room or when you are reading a page beside its code in Live Preview.

File, Options

The Options window holds three groups of settings.

The first is how many files move at once. Uploads and downloads run side by side, each on its own connection, and you can choose from 1 to 10 at a time. The default is 3, which suits most shared hosting. If a server refuses an extra connection, the app carries on with the ones it has and uses that number from then on, so you do not need to know your host's limit in advance.

The second is the local version history. Before a file is overwritten by Get, Get newer, an editor save or a Put, the previous version is kept on your PC. Options sets how many versions are kept per file, a total size cap for the whole history and a maximum file size, and Clear history empties it. If you work with large images or downloads, these limits stop the history from growing bigger than you would like. If you mostly edit text files, you can afford to keep more versions.

The third is your name for activity logs. When a site has the optional activity log turned on, every upload, delete and rename adds a line with the time, the action, the path, your chosen name, the PC name and the app version. Setting your name here means colleagues reading Site Activity see who you are rather than just the name of your computer.

The licence agreement

The first time FTP by Zaweba starts, it asks you to accept the licence agreement. That happens once. The agreement stays available under Help, so you can read it again whenever you like. The app is free software under that agreement, with no account to create.

Where everything else lives

Many settings you might expect here are per site instead, because they depend on the server. Protocol, passive mode, the local and remote folders, the public address, scan connections for Disk, exclusion patterns, Upload files when I save, and the Disk option for protected paths all belong to each site in Site Manager. That way a strict host and a relaxed one can each have the settings that suit them.

Other choices live in the View menu, alongside the theme: the bottom panel with the transfer queue and find results, Live Preview, and Upload on Save.

A first-day checklist in words

Pick a theme. Open Options and type your name, even if you work alone today, so the activity log is ready if you ever share a site. Leave files at once on 3 unless you have a reason to change it. Glance at the history limits and decide whether they suit the size of files you work with. Then head to Site Manager and set up your first site.

A few minutes here, and the app will behave the way you want for the long run.